FLL Mission Overview Part 11 - Oil Barrels
Mission Information: The purpose of this mission is to simply keep the robot-operator from retrieving or "rescuing" the robot too many times. The referee penalizes a team by removing one of the barrels in the team's possesion (whether in Base, Parking Lot, or the foldable table ;-), thus causing a team to lose 10 points because each barrel in the team's possesion is worth 10 points. Also, the referre will prioritize taking white barrels before red. So, a team begins with five white barrels in Base, thus the team starts with 50 points. The team can also retrieve 3 more barrels (2 white and 1 red) from the Oil Drilling Mission. Therefore, there is a lot of strategy to consider: "Should I save time and grab the robot?" or "Should I save points and let the robot come bach to Base?"Also, we would like to wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving, and everybody travelling do so safely!
Richard
Jonathan's Comments: Note that no Barrels will be taken away if none are in Base. By the way, Base includes the Parking Lot only if you move the Barrels there by hand - if the robot moves the Barrels to the Parking Lot, they aren't considered to be in Base (and therefore the robot may touch them, but not the drivers).
Comments
But if the robot moves them to the lot, where they are not "in base" for referee-take-away purposes, then don't they also lose their scoring value, since they are no longer "in base?"
It seems like we can't have it both ways. If they can score, they can be taken for penalty; if they can't be taken for penalty, then they can't score.
No?
Go A.E.R.O. Cows!!!
i thought about doing that, moving the barrels out of base, it would save a lot of time.
I appreciate this year that the bonus loss is larger than in the past. It makes an interesting point strategically.
Josh
So they decided not to move the barrels out of base to "save" them. The only mission that sometimes goes awry is retrieving the truck, so they are willing to risk the 10 point penalty if they have to do a rescue there.
I personally think the 10 point penalty will make the weaker teams weaker. On the otherhand, every team starts with 50 points (last year it was 24 points).
Right... you wouldn't get penalized, but neither would you get the points for them. :P
-Jonathan
Does this mean that you can put the barrels in a cage and have the robot carry it around the whole time? In that case, the rescue would not occur "while" there are barrels in base, or "at the time" of the rescue.
At the end of the round, the robot returns to base with all the oil barrels intact.
I think the time required for the robot to move the barrels out of the base and then retrieve them back to the base could be better spent on one of the other missions if your robot is unlikely to need a rescue.
Why would anyone consider moving the white ones to the power plant as they only give you 5 points there?
I don't understand something still with this mission.