Changes to Match Play

[twlum]

While I like the idea of a quicker transition from Autonomous to Tele-Op, I would like to suggest still having field personnel untangle or upright tipped over robots. It stands to reason that teams will try more advanced autonomous programs (something I think we should be encouraging) if there wasn't such a huge penalty if something should go wrong. I think we need to keep a human element in the game and having a chance to "reset" any huge mistakes or collisions after autonomous could offer that. Maybe others could weigh in and show me the sunny side to this rule change?

[RollerCoaster45]

I think that it will cause teams to write more efficient autonomous programs now that use more sensors so the robots won't get entangled and/or tipped. Also, since teams aren't allowed to cross to the other side during autonomous, you would have to get entangled on your alliance partner's robot which you should easily be able to avoid through strategy. I think that this change is good as it will speed up competitions and make match play a lot more fun to watch, but it will also make the drivers more stressed because in that 5 seconds they have to pick up gamepads and the driver station, select the op mode and initialize it. What might have been nice is if we could use the same op mode for autonomous as we do in teleop so we wouldn't have to pick another op mode.

[adriesman]

I agree with TWIUM. This is my 8th year coaching in FTC. To have bots taken out of commission due to another bot during autonomous is not fair to any of the teams.

[FTC12914]

Rookie team, but we agree for all above reasons, untangle, set bots up where they are.

[RollerCoaster45]

From all the matches I have seen so far, it doesn't look like the bots come close to interacting since you can't cross the line during autonomous and you hopefully will have planned ahead with your alliance partner to make sure you have the right autonomous program. The problem I have seen is robots crashing after autonomous. Don't know what causes it but it could become a huge problem in the future.