First off, 16 x 16 instead of 12 x 12. Todays bots are fast enough to warrant it.
Have areas of limited resources, but other things to do. Rollers were fun. Mogos were… almost fun if they didn’t make the match. Tower multiplers in TT were fun. Flipping caps in TuP were fun.
Require risk/reward in endgame. Do you go park in the corner/plat, do you defend it, or do you continue to score while doing it. Good bots could do several things.
Add small servos and 3-D printing, but in a limited capacity. Limitations breed creativity.
Or do we go bigger: 20x20 and 3v3? What do you think would make for a robotics competition that is larger and more exciting than VRC/FTC but cheaper and simpler than FRC?
Sounds awesome but making the field 16x16 would warant a lot of issues with finding a place for it, and everyone would have to buy more perimeter and tiles etc. 3d printing I 100% agree with though
I’d say that vex is the perfect size as is for a middle frc and IQ robotics competition
Could always just make the bots a bit weaker to balance it out. It’s been fun to see what v5 bots can pull off, but the 393’s seemed to be a bit more balanced power-wise and the fields felt a lot bigger back then.
Having smaller bots would also make the fields feel bigger, but as robots get smaller it gets increasingly more difficult to fit v5 components and robot mechanisms inside the limits.
Personally, I like the up close feeling of the fields. You’re right. There isn’t enough space for how we push these robots, and to me, that’s the point. It requires robots to push each other, it requires people to be on their toes with strategy, and also leads to some spicy matches.
Of course, a water game could solve all these issues.
I agree with the robot capabilities. 3d printing is mainstream enough at this point, and every team in theory should have access to a printer, if not own one themselves.
IMO, judging should be a larger part of tournaments, so that people can be more encouraged to push the limits of the rules…
Well you could also have the skills rankings weigh as WP or tie breakers.
Instead of just using qualifiers for WP, you could add a WP for which quartile of skills you are in, or some other weird variation.
I really enjoyed how teams would try and reduce win margins to increase SOS or decrease their opponents SOS. I thought that that was an aboslutely fantastic metastrategy.
If instead of Just WP >AP > … where each subsequent metric was a tiebreaker, they could have a way to calculate their net performance as a number.
A*(WP)+B*(AP)+C*(Skills composite score)+D*(SOS) or something like that.