This is the wildest game manual update I have seen. Let’s break down how it might affect our early season meta.
Changed the Field layout such that Positive Corners and Negative Corners are now on the same side of the Field, rather than cater cornered
This is an interesting decision. I think I understand the idea to make the field symmetrical especially for VEXU teams. This one probably won’t affect strategy a lot. Just a slightly different layout.
Added a new rule, SC9, that adds a 2-point bonus per Climb for whichever Alliance has a Ring Scored on the High Stake at the end of a Match
Here is “the good” of this update in my opinion. The high stake needed to be more enticing, and this was a good way of doing this.
Rewrote SG5c to clarify that preloads cannot start in a Scored location
Another good update. But kudos to the teams @meng that caught the loophole before it got fixed.
Added a new rule, SG11, to add a 10 second protection to Positive Corners at the end of a Match
Alright here’s the controversial one. I have mixed feelings about them being locked for 10 seconds. I like the idea that you can climb safely, but I liked the idea of pushfights for the corner. I want to hear your guy’s thoughts.
Added two new bullets to RSC3 to clarify that the blue Alliance Stake may be used in Robot Skills Matches
Yeah ok.
Well there you have it. A game rework. I am eager to hear your thoughts!
So Vex U has a different field layout, so changing the corners actually made the field mirrored instead of rotationally symmetric, which means that we will have to have different autonomous depending on whether we are on the red or blue alliance, so that change was quite annoying to us.
Personally, I feel like some of these changes came a little too early. The GDC tends to make some larger changes to the game around half way through the year, and I would have liked to see the fight for the corners vs hang for a good portion of the season before adding the protection.
This is the perfect rework to incintivize hang. but I was a pretty big fan of the corner fights that would have occurd end of game. and it also makes the highest stake worth more which is pretty cool.
I would hazard a guess that the corner change is done now, because mid-season would cause major auton disruptions, where right now it’s (relatively) minor, other than the early competition regions. This sort of change should come with an effectivity date, like {after July XY, the corners will switch}, so that teams would not suddenly have to know which side of the field they’re on.
I guess GDC is trying to get a balance between having the fight and at the same time incentivised climbing.
Without the changes, I really find it difficult to consider climbing.
As for the corner fight, I still think it will happen - but restricted to the negative corners.
But at the same time, after Blank’s Beginning scrimmage, and looking at how congested (with unscored rings) the corners will be, I do think 10sec protection sounds about right.
Vex U has a different set up. We have 3 mogos on the line, One in the middle and one on each side. The only things that are not symmetrical for us now are the corners and the high stake.
I don’t have a strong feelings about this. I had nothing against the previous layout of the corners, but if the GDC thinks that this new layout is better then I suppose that’s fine.
I think this was completely necessary. In fact, I still think they should’ve made the high stake even more important. After all, it’s literally called High Stakes!
I will say trying to get that ring on the stake is a little more important, but one of my team members still thinks it’s not going to be worth it. Perhaps it would be if it’s a close match, but it’s going to be really hard.
I have mixed feelings about this myself. I don’t like it as descoring at the last 10 seconds was one a strategy that we had, but I like it that we can actually climb now. So, I have mixed feelings about it. I think in the long run it’ll work out fine.
We had to go back and change our game analysis and talk about the updates. I know they talk about not updating past entries, but in order to keep everything organized, I had to. I just noted that the parts I added were from the June 25th update.
I hate how this year’s game field layout is different on the red side from the blue side. Now, a decent team that will have two codes per starting side (one for awp and another for elims) has to have all 8 programs used up just for matches, because each of the 4 starting spots are different from each other.
As a driver I don’t like the corners being switched. For all of the games I have driven for (tipping point, spin up, and over under) the field has been rotationally symmetrical. With the new corners the red team has the safe positive corners on the right side but now they are on the left side for the blue team.
While this is a small inconvenience that effects both teams equally, I would have preferred that the high school field just switched to the Vex U field setup so that red team doesn’t have an advantage from starting with an extra goal closer to the positive corner. (I think that is the reason they changed it)
For the 2 point bonus this makes a tier 3 hang with a high stake ring 17-31 points. This is 19-34% of the max score which is huge (in terms of over under this is 65-117 points) and with up to 32 other points protected due to SG11 this will make or break matches. I think that there will still be pushfights in the negative corners and over the wall stakes as those are another 16 points to descore or score.
SG5c still technically allows for alliance stake pre-loading as the ring can be not scored and not touching the stake if you balance it on the wall and the robot, I was never going to use this as it makes the AWP harder but it is funny that they have changed this twice and it’s still possible.
The strategy used at blank beginnings was to start the robot under the alliance stake and touching the preload. So the ring is in a legal position as when you are touching a ring it is not scored.
This new update makes that harder to do, but the ring could technicaly balance between the robot and the wall while still not “contacting the stake” which means it’s still a legal position.
My plan for auton is a goal rush with the preload so having to pick up a ring on the way will waste a lot of time.
The GDC orginally answered a Q&A with just the “the ring has to start in a unscored position,” but now they added a second rule that makes the strat harder but still not impossible.
and a good team will have one program with an autonomous feature selector to simplify things - 8 graphical buttons (or jumpers) can yield way more than 8 possibilities! In addition, one program is easier to maintain.
This is a violation of SG5 because the ring is in a scored location. I assume you have read the manual, but you might want to look again at SG5 and the scored criteria for rings. A ring can be scored without touching the stake.
I apologize, thank you for correcting me. What I meant was what Foximusprime said in his response. I should have included a robot holding up the ring from the other side in the image so that the ring isn’t technically scored because it’s touching a robot. When the robot drives away from the ring, it will be considered scored. In fact, under SG5a, it is illegal to put the preload on a stake without a robot touching it because the preload has to be touching a robot of the same alliance color as the ring.
