Hello again everybody! Time for another (slightly late) question of the week!
**Question of the Week (6/3/04):
If there was only one thing that you could change about this years game, what would it be and why?**
Keep the conversation going!
Remember, all suggestions welcomed, through PM, E-Mail ([email protected]), or AOL Instant Message (QuietRiverRage1)
Have fun!
Andy Grady
I would have allowed the robots to score the 5 pt. balls.
If I could change one thing about this year’s game, I’d probably do something about the ball chutes. Too many teams were losing too many points (or matches!) because of it. Surely there’s a simple, safe, and penalty-proof way of delivering balls to HPs…like that paddle thing they were suggesting early in the season.
I agree that this could have improved the game. Another thing I thought off is taking another spin off of 2001, and have different colored balls. There would be two alliance colored balls, and the one on top could remain the same (yellow). The red alliance ball would start on the blue mobile goal, and vice versa. A team could their ball on top of one of their goals for a 2x, or cap one of the other team’s goals to “steal” the points (small ball value only).
My only issue was the long time period before ball drop. I probably would have given 25 points for getting the yellow ball in auton mode and dropped all the balls 10 seconds after end of auton mode if they had not been released. One thing that I didn’t like about this year was time outs.
Edit - Timeouts slowed down the game and took away momentum with the croud. As an announcer it was very difficult to keep things on a high level when there is a 15 minute delay. (2 + 6 + 1 + 6)
It was better when the balls would drop early in the round. Maybe the better course of action would have been to make the outside balls worth 25 points each and once autonomous mode ended, take them off the posts, while having the balls drop right from the begining.
I disagree with ya on the time outs however. I was happy to see them return this year, and I feel that they are a good thing to have in these games which can be very destructive towards a machine.
-Andy Grady
If I could have changed one thing from this year’s game I would have made the steps (by the stationary goal) bigger in height and width, so as to add another route that was equally difficult to climb, BUT easier to drive around.
I would’ve like to have seen points given for strategy.
Example: You uncap an opponents goal: you get 10 points.
Example: You prevent a cap by putting an arm in the way (or something): you get 5 points.
Etc.
MrToast
I think allowing goaltending would have been a great way to increase play. It would make people really think of different ways to score or prevent scoring or doing both at the same time.
I disagree. If that were so, it would be much more difficult to score with balls, and the whole game would pretty much have been determined by who could hang the best. Of course, many teams goaltended anyway. . .
I think the 10pt balls should’ve been worth 10 points to hit, not just if you scored one. I think more teams would’ve designed bots to accomplish this task, hence more would get into the whole autonomous thing. Yes, our team didn’t hit the ball, but we did desin an autonomous program that grabbed both the portable goal and the doubler ball, since that was more important to our strategy than getting the early ball drop. The point is, there wasn’t enough motivation for teams to make a successful autonomous program. Many just seemed to move forward, and others had none at all. Last year, having a successful autonomous period gave you a huge advantage, in my opinion (remember team 71?). There just wasn’t enough of an incentive to hit that ball this year.
clarification on the ruling on goal tending with the big yellow ball under the waterfall… also let the robots score all the balls.
What i meant though was that teams would have to be more creative in ways of scoring. Say pusing pvc pipes apart to allow the balls to be shot in between them. And i never noticed much goaltending. Just creative ways to block them from scoring. Like capping the goal before they had any.
I’m going to have to go with “making the 10 point ball usefull” (or at least worth more; as it stands, the only real uses are listed here 
). I only saw the 10 point ball hit the floor a couple times in all the official competitions I watched. And even when it did hit the floor, it never made it back to the coral. I did enjoy the way they handled it at Beantown Blitz though (for the uninformed, at that 45 second mark when the balls drop, they’d poke the four 10 point balls on the field).
So yeah, the 10 point balls were officially useless, and during the kickoff, they were billed as being one of the more pivotal points in the game. Other than that, I’m pretty happy with how things worked out.
If I really had to change something, I would like to see the robots max. weight increase to 140 pounds. I know it can be unsafe and all that, but 10 pounds can create a LOT of options for some teams. I mean another function or two; or improvisation on what the robot already does could affect the way they play greatly. I know weight is a part of the challenge of building a robot and all that, but still…
-Bharat
I would have liked to have scoring zones for the mobile goals (like in 2002) for them to count (yep. Something else for the teams to keep track of on the field because there’s just not enough mayhem out there to be had this year! :rolleyes: ).
It would have been cool if the longer back PVC tubing for the two stationary goals had been shortened, or the shorter front PVC tubing extended. This would make shooting more difficult, but also would make the balls less likely to ricochet back toward the HP.
How about if you could remove the pvs pipes?!?!?!?!?! That would add alot of excitement to the game. Yet FIRST wouldnt want the field being ripped apart lol. But it would be a quick way to change the flow of the game. You also dont know if any balls would come out if they get jammed or not. So it would be a fun little twist to toss in.
How about we just make the PVC something more stable, something not so flimsy, yet not very breakable. I’m always watching balls slip through the cracks of pvc, its not fair!! I want those 5 points! Therefore the goals don’t expands as much, but they DO hold balls better, no more pvc pipes flapping wildly in the wind…er i mean arena…