Parking Bonus: Useful or Irrelevant?

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC > In The Zone (17/18)
1

An alliance is awarded 2 points per robot parked on a colored tile at the end of the match. Each tile may only have up to one parked robot.

Will 4 possible extra points make a difference in this year’s game? Or is it insignificant compared to the scores possible with cones and goals?

2

I honestly think it’s irrelevant, and was put in the game to 1) be an extra thing to do in skills, and 2) make pushbots feel better about themselves.

3

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A Pushbot Guide to In the Zone

Autonomous Period

  1. Ensure you have a 15-second delay before your autonomous code runs
  2. Don’t interfere with your partner’s autonomous
    Driver Control
  3. Drive to a parking tile and park on it
  4. Turn off your controller
    =============================================================
    Obviously this is a joke. Pushbot teams, however, should seriously reconsider their robots’ design.
4

2 Points will not make a difference this year.

Imagine a ratio of parking bonus : autonomous bonus
Bridge Battle = 5:5
Elevation = 5:10
Sack Attack = 10:10
ITZ = 2:10
(not included is NBN, as its parking bonus actually took 2 teammates to get).

As you can see, the relative points of a parking bonus has fluctuated between 1:1 and 1:2, however this year it dropped to 1:5. This makes it irreverent.

5

As with sack attack the parking bonus is there to show new teams that they can score something.Remember why vex never make a game too hard its so that younger more inexperienced competitors can still compete.

6

While a total of 4 points is not much this year, it could decide a few matches occasionally.

7

It seems like it could be something used to distract people. 2-4 points is great and all, but you could stack a couple more cones and possibly gain the “highest stack bonus” from doing so.

8

I see it mostly as an autonomous option for beginner teams, and a last-second move if you happen to be close.

9

Might have misread but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count in auton, it’s just the team with more pylons and cones scored, correct me if I’m wrong

10

@Escargo You are correct. Only points from scoring objects are counted in Auton.

11

do you have a source on that. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

12

Take a look at the definition of Autonomous Bonus

13

Ah, so highest stack wouldn’t count.

14

That’s strange, the parking bonus would be a great way for a newer team to help with the autonomous period…

15

There is a great forum post about this very thing that still hasn’t been answered.

(This post may have been answered by the time you are reading it)

16

Parking bonus was made so the teams can say they were “In The Zone”.
otherwise they would be “zoned out”

17

Well… You don’t have to be fully in the parking zone. You just have to touch it.

18

LOL
True
This is the worst idea for a bonus ever made in VEX!!

19

Thinking about it, the parking bonus could come in handy if both alliances are evenly skilled and sweep the filed in match. But I don’t think that this is going to happen anytime soon, looking forward to seeing the MS World Champs (8066) back in action at the Singapore Vex Championship, maybe it will happen then…

20

Definition of irreverent
: lacking proper respect or seriousness; also : satiric

Not to be a troll, but not sure how parking is irreverent. Irrelevant maybe.