Recently myself and a few other FRC alumni have been asked to mentor a rookie team, and we are wondering; which old games would be the best to analyse? Also, for myself this is the first time I will be teaching game analysis to a rookie team, so suggestion on how to go about doing so are also welcome.
Personally, I think Aerial Assist (2014) is the easiest to analyse simply because of how straightforward scoring was.
I would say 2011 Logomotion. Our team used it last year for design and strategy training. It was a pretty good game for introducing autonomous and it was honestly pretty easy to get the catch on because of the low number of categories.
We just did a practice kickoff for Rebound Rumble and it worked great- an overall simple strategic decision with a lot of subtleties to catch. The two big ones were “can anyone think of 118’s bridge mechanisms” and “will they realize that 3 full sized robots can’t fit on a bridge.”
Anyone who thinks the scoring in Aerial Assist was straightforward never read the AA manual before seeing the game. Or tried to use a ref panel.
The key thing is to replicate what kickoff will be like. For choice of game, for rookies, I’d suggest something relatively simple but interesting. Maybe 2013.
Ditto. I like using 2013 due to the ease of showing how important cost benefit analysis is in the first few days. That game allows for multiple case studies: floor disc pickup, climbing all the rungs, full court shooting (not so applicable after that year unfortunately).
Personally, I agree that 2014 is a great game to practice with. It has a straight forward scoring system and a huge variety of practical robot designs and strategies.
As for how to teach it, start with breaking down scoring. A table with the x-axis having Auton/Teleop and a y-axis with how you can score points is a pretty simple style. Fill it in with the points per period. Afterwards go into the K.I.S.S. method and remind them to keep their ideas and designs practical (i.e. no EMPs or flamethrowers)
Worst comes to worst, you can always show them designs of great teams from 2014. Teams like 254, 1114, and 118 can be models for what is fantastic, but hard to do for a rookie. Instead, show them images of teams like 16, 868, or 2481. All were great teams with simplistic designs.
Best of luck to you guys!!
Straightforward? If it was straightforward, then why did one team spend three matches in the Q-box trying to convince the head ref that they had 10 more points than they were credited for, only to be finally informed that there were 3 refs watching them and nobody saw it that way? (In a loss that wouldn’t be a win, at that?) Or why did an alliance take a tech foul to prevent a possible score (and lose anyways)?
That was NOT a straightforward scoring system!
If you want to analyze a game, I like to go for 2004. There were 3 ways that could win. The hard part was that each could beat one of the others.
A different one every year. I personally like to use those with some non-linear scoring and which had some distinctive robot solutions - it’s more likely to create the right expectations for January. The two most recent ones we’ve used were FIRST Overdrive and Triple Play.
just for reference here, these are students that have no robotics or design experience, and no, I did not participate in FRC during 2014, but from what I can collect just by watching old matches and reveal videos is that a very simple design can do well. Which is what I want to explain to my students and, from an outside perspective it is a relatively easy game to follow, unlike recent years where there are many different ways to score.
I also agree 2013 would be a fairly straight forward game to teach game analysis with.
I would if my students had some background in design, but they are brand new to first so I want to keep it simple.
I have found that 2015 is really great to start out with to teach the students the benefits of score effectiveness and time consumption. Then also the different robot aspects to the game that were not common among other games, such as the tethered robots. Then for more in-depth, maybe 2013 or 2014 to teach robot strategies and introduce them to robot “hot pockets” (the corners of the robot that can effectively alter a shot if they take a hit from an opposing robot at the right time). Anyways good luck to you guys!
For simple, use 2010.
Let me describe Aerial Assist scoring: Depending on how many robots touched the same ball, and where they touched it, you could get anywhere between 1 and 40 points per score (plus a couple of optional 10-pointers, one that everybody got and one that almost nobody got). And that’s not counting the auto bonuses.
For 2010, it was really simple: 1 point per ball score. 2 points for hanging on the tower (ignore the 3-point score as nobody bothered to do it).
2014 was my Freshman year of high school and my first year on a FRC team. I was one of those students who stood at the question box match after match but those were all because of fouls, not scoring. The day of kickoff, I read the rule manual three times cover to cover. If you want to understand scoring easily, then read the manual.
While my team did not have the best robot at either competition we went to, the game was pretty simple. Scoring was multiplies of 10 so it made sense. Do task x, get 10 extra points when the ball is scored. 2014 was one of the most straightforward scoring systems for a game that encouraged coorpertition.
The best part about FIRST is how they are trying to teach students to work with people who are different than them through coopertition. They want games that make it hard for a single robot to win it all. They want to encourage teams to learn to work well with each other and help one another. Up until 2014, almost every game could be won by a single robot if they were good enough, but no robot can win a match in 2014 unless they were playing against three hunks of metal that couldn’t move.
If the OP wants a game to teach their students how the modern era of games function, games that force coopertition, games that don’t allow a single robot to win it all, then 2014 is a great game!
Versus 2010? 2010 encouraged coopertition so much teams played hostile 6v0 matches!
2010’s ranking system, on the other hand, was brutal. But for straight gameplay, ranking can often be ignored–admittedly at the expense of ranking high sometimes. 1 point per action. 2 points for a second action. Simple.
I’d like to endorse 2013 for a good mock kickoff game. There are a lot of good ways to play the game and, unless you’re 469, you’re gonna have to carefully consider your tradeoffs.
2014 , in theory and by the rulebook, was an incredibly easy scoring system to understand. There was one game object for the majority of the match and as already mentioned most scoring was in multiples of 10 which made it easy to keep track of the score. For these reasons I think it makes it a fine game to analyze. The single game piece and the bonuses given for including your alliance in game strategy made for some fun strategies.
However as those who lived through the game know, it did not turn out to be as simple as intended. This was due to changing of the definition of possession/assist throughout the season and different refs/teams understanding of these definitions. That and penalties of course.
However while going for the “easy” game to analyze might be a good place to start, it might be worth looking at the games from the previous two years because this next years game is likely to be more like those examples than anything before that.
We just did 2010. About as simple as a modern FRC game can get.
Balls 1 point. Climbing 2 points. Grappling with partner 3 points.
Breakaway allows the team to discuss GAMEPLAY strategy rather than SCORING strategy. You can focus on estimating how long it will take to accomplish certain maneuvers on the field and weigh that against points earned.
I’ve run mock kickoffs using a few different games (I can remember at least '05,'07,'10,'11,'12,'13,'14), some more successful than others. Recently, I’ve liked to use games that cause “most” teams to make significant strategic trade-offs (choose not to “do it all”). In that respect, I like '13, '16, and '17 (I wouldn’t want to analyse '17 with a veteran team but for a rookie team it would do just fine).
As far as how to do it, I just recently watched the Nutrons’ video on game analysis and it seems like a great overview.
2017: Good for complex analysis due to the two-pronged scoring system with relatively independent scoring.
2016: Similar to 2017 but less complex due to partial dependence on one scoring method to the other.
2015: Quite simple analysis due to the lack of defense.
2014: Simple gameplay, but good for analysis due to the heavy amount of cooperation necessary.
2013: Similar to 2017 due to the complexity of the endgame, but much more heavily leaning on one scoring method.
2012: Relatively simple game, mostly one scoring method with a big risk/reward during endgame.
2011: Relatively little analysis due to simple strategies.
2010: Another simple game, but would be fun to see if your team could think of the 469 strategy (If they don’t know it already.)
2009: Uhh… No
2008: Two scoring elements semi-dependent on each other, like 2016.
2007: Another game extremely heavy in cooperation, a lot like 2014.
2006: Mainly a one scoring method game, relatively uninteresting for analysis.
2005: Quite unique due to the extremely back-and-forth nature of the game, and the importance of cooperation, one of my favorite for analysis.
2004 and earlier: Two robot alliances make analysis less relevant to today’s format. (I also don’t really know much about these games.)
Overall Rankings (In terms of games to analyze):