What do you think was the most debated game regarding strategy and method? Do you think this was different among college and high school levels?
Personally I find these wallbots really quite annoying. People design them and call them game killers, which they do entirely have the ability to be a game killer. But they don’t look into every aspect that needs to be looked at. Considering souly defensive game play will be looked at under extra scrutiny then I think extra scrutiny should be taken to ensure every single system is 100% legal 100% of the time. None of those stuff that we’ve been seeing recently with possible legal holes in the entire design.
Point being, These wallbot designs. I can really really hope that this year is the end of them. Entirely.
End Rant.
- Andrew
Edit: I’d also like to point out that this is for Gateway, and Sack Attack.
Completely agreed. Wallbots seem to me like a cheap way of winning. They are semi-easy to build (this is my opinion, not a fact!!) and treat you like a rag doll.
I think trough blockers (not wallbots) are fair game though. They are not easy to build and if built right are effective and make the game a lot more interesting. More interesting than seeing a wallbot toss some robots around.
It seems as this to me personally
Bridge Battle - Ehh Okay could be better but got to start somewhere right!
Elevation - Okay now we’re getting Somewhere.
Clean Sweep - Time to see who can use the KISS Method effectively.
Round Up - Wait Haven’t we seen this somewhere else? First Maybe
Gateway - Best season yet! No complaints
Sack Attack - Clawbot Time
Although I was a little disappointed when Sack Attack was revealed I have grown to like it. It is a bit challenging. I also really like how VEX is incorporating FIRST ideas and adding their own little twist, and I’m not being sarcastic either I really do like it.
It was smart of VEX to release a robot that is in a box and ready to build to sign up and compete in their game. Good strategy.
I cannot wait to see what VEX has in store next year. Please surprise me again!
Hahahahahaha, no comment
Hey! what’s so wrong about Gateway?
Design convergence taken to a whole different (and annoying) level.
Two words: autonomous bonus. (or lack thereof).
P.S. Also the difficult field setup, difficult field reset, and allowed autonomous realignment.
I also hope to see the end of wallbots, as I actually enjoy watching matches and seeing something that just shuts down the game and prevent anything from happening is pretty boring (less so in gateway as the field half the field was still free for robots to do stuff, but still). On top of that I find wallbot designs fairly uninteresting most of the time, and also seem very easy to build (but very expensive with all the metal/linear slides one will have to buy to expand a whole field).
I personally think that Gateway was one of the most boring games Vex has put out strategy wise (although I am mostly think strategy wise in the design stage and not the driving stage). There are really only two things that are needed, reach every contested goal first and score the doubler/negator into the highest value stack that you can reach. In reality since they dealt with the same game pieces there was only one thing to do which is to score as quickly as possible and move as quickly possible (which are common in most games anyway). I am not saying gateway is completely bad or boring, just that it might have been a little to simple.
Compared to something like Round Up (imo the best Vex game even if it is a little similar to Quad Quandary) where you had climbing, descoring, scoring, hoarding, and probably some more that I am forgetting. This allowed for far more trade offs in design, where you have to analyze what your strategy was going to be and build to that. I feel it has a lot more depth.
Sack attack is somewhere between Gateway and Round Up with multiple distinct objectives (scoring, descoring, and high goal), and with a little more focus on when to score. This is pretty good, and Sack Attack seems to be a solid game from what I have seen.
As one of the people who built WASABI’s original Honey Badger (in AUGUST last year), I completely disagree. First of all, they don’t score. It is very possible to beat something that scores between 0 and 2 (corner goals :D) points. Second, saying they’re “semi-easy to build” is like saying an efficiency robot is “semi-easy to build.” They vary: some can be extremely simple (like the robot 1492Z has been competing with recently. It’s literally a squarebot with 8 drive motors) and some can be complex (2W and 1437Z, anyone?). Third, they don’t really treat you like a rag doll. Remember, your robot and the wallbot will use the same number of motors. You just chose to use yours differently than they did. And if you still think they’re destroying your robot, then build a more sturdy one. 10D, last year, built an efficiency robot that could stand up to and even beat wallbots at their own game, thanks to good building and a smart implementation of a transmission.
If you don’t like the wallbots this year, just remember: you’re allowed to do whatever you want to them now. It takes very little power to move a wall that’s 4 feet away from a drive base.
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Honestly, I really don’t like wallbots, but most of them that I have seen aren’t very effective at what they are meant to do anyway. As long as they aren’t as dangerous as some of the tension expansions that have been revealed on the forums, I don’t really mind it. They’re more like an annoyance than a game breaker if you ask me. But then again, it might just be that I haven’t experienced a well designed wall bot. But, back to the thread. I honestly think that in the games I have competed in (round up, gateway, and sack attack) I think round up was probably my favorite with sack attack as a somewhat close second. I think this is due to the fact that round up had so many different things to do. There was scoring, descoring, climbing, all without too much in the ways of robot contact. Gateway, in my opinion, was a good game in theory. It added a good amount of challenge with the 30" goal for the first time, but the designs were painfully familliar. Sack attack I think is really cool, but the limited number of places to score makes for a very aggressive game that gets somewhat aggrevating at times. All together, though, I have had plenty of fun with every game!
I don’t mind defense. But what I really like about Vex is how it is so non-linear and margins/trade-offs count so much in building an offensive bot. I would like to see outer limits to the expansion/weight which could bring similar/additional challenges to the defense. William “Refrigerator” Perry was good at clogging the middle for the Bears in the 1980’s but he could not cover the whole field forcing a trade-off in strategy above and beyond just not playing offense. As for controversy, I think spring loaded random extensions on some of the wallbots in Sack Attack which cannot be remotely controlled once deployed should be subject to additional scrutiny for the unnecessary risk of entanglement.
+1 IMHO I think that the rules should state that there shall be no lateral extension (in excess of a certain distance) that is not directly controlled by the driver. This would force a bit more innovation and would pose less risk to other robots and bystanders. Early on in the season my team had entertained the idea of some extensions that came out about 18" on either side using either pneumatic cylinders or linear slides and a scissor type assembly. I talked them out of it since we did not have the budget for pneumatics at the time, and did not have any extra motors to spare without exceeding the 10 393’s already in use.
I do believe a highly controllable and effective wallbot could be built, specifically if you had a static base that did not need any motors.