The cryptic title means this thread is going to discuss the difference / pros and cons of the standard VRC two robots vs two robots and the TSA one robot vs one robot.
I got a chance to watch the TSA Nationals in Baltimore yesterday. Their version of Clean Sweep is played in a smaller 8’ x 8’ field with 8 footballs and 12 soccer balls on each side. There are two center towers one on on each side. No white ball.
First let me say that the TSA roboteers that participated were amazing. All of the robots were good, and would have given any of the VRC robots a run for their money. The roboteers knew their robots, why they chose their design, etc. There was a lot of skilled driving going on.
The smaller field and the single robot on a side altered play. Teams didn’t need to worry about running into the other robot. Scoring was high with a number of +50 point scores. There were two teams that I saw that could score soccer balls in the tower. (And during the quarterfinals one team figured out that putting the football in the tower would make an effective block).
All of us there commented on how we liked the roboto-a-roboto action. It made the game a little more competetive. (And the one semifinal was really competetive with both teams being from the same club AND going three matches in the best out of three)
So would you like to play RoundUp 1 v 1?
I would totally lay Round Up 1 vs 1. I think playing 2 vs 2 has its advantages, it teaches teams about how to work together with other teams and forces them to communicate with one another. The disadvantages to playing 2 vs 2 is that it does not always give an accurate outcome for all robots involved because if one robot is really great but is matched up with a nonfunctional robot playing against two somewhat good robots there is a chance that the really great bot would loose the match despite possibly being better than any other single robot on the field. I think playing 1 vs 1 gives an accurate outcome.
~DK
Agree fully with your points - one of the most irritating things for me is seeing robots ‘carried’ through to the finals - this would totally eliminate that.
Well there are some good points to mention about having robots be “carried” through. This gets the team excited about the competition and really widens the possibilities for that team in the future. They may qualify for worlds and if they go they could see some of the awesome designs there and lean a lot which they can then use in the next season where they could possibly “carry” a newer team and the cycle continues.
The cons to being “carried” is that robots that may be less qualified for worlds themselves end up getting an invitation and they could then become the nonfunctional robot that i used in my example in the above post.
I like the current format (2 vs 2) but i think 1 vs 1 is a good way to properly rank individual teams because it eliminates the random luck or lack of luck of being matched up in an alliance.
~DK
On the other hand, 1v1 only gets you half the matches of 2v2 if all else is equal (# of teams, # of fields, and total time for the competition). So, while your record is based only on your performance, one tough loss hurts you more because you have fewer total matches to balance it out.
I’ll let you know in two weeks after IRI what I think of Round Up 1v1. I don’t like 1v1 games as I feel alliances make games much more interesting, and you can’t sacrifice capability as easily knowing that you can’t pick a partner with the ability you lack. Still, this game looks rather exciting!
Guys,
Robots don’t get “carried through” because robots don’t compete.
Alliances compete.
The world doesn’t revolve around just my team, or around any other.
The way the non-TSA, High School and younger, VRC competition is defined, it is played by alliances, not by teams. If you want to do well in that type of VRC competition, keep alliances in mind from day one until the Championship finals of each season.
Similarly, football, baseball, soccer, basketball, cricket, rugby, … are played by aggregations of athletes (assisted by a deep infrastructure of support staff), not by individuals.
Your team and others will be successful if they are good at making alliances successful. I recommend viewing tournament results through this lens.
Blake