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Re: Mission Possible C
Posted: June 6th, 2014, 7:23 pm
by A Person
Trumpsta wrote:olympiaddict wrote:Personally, although I really liked the energy transfer concept in theory, it was very unclear and as I'm sure everyone remembers caused a lot of rules problems in practice.
It would still be a very cool premise next year, but if it is kept I really hope something is done to clear things up for next year, with all due respect of course. Otherwise I hope we go back to the machine-elements-and-such-based tasks, which are also a lot of fun and very interesting
I agree! Transfers result in more creativity, but it is also more difficult to define what is legal. Tasks reduce creative freedom, but it is a little easier to know whether something is allowed or not. That isn't to say there isn't any creativity in tasks––you still need to come up with a way to execute the objective, how to fit them all together, and/or how to use components that you may not otherwise use. However, if they could clean up transfers (say, define it so that a transfer involves two unrelated components and mention input/output energy somehow), it would be a lot easier to follow the rules. Put some test in the rules that everyone can apply to each transfer to determine whether it was legal or not, and such.
I think the last part of your statement would help a lot. Having "guidelines" to check your build could probably resolve a large portion of the problems that have been created in the confusion.
Re: Mission Possible C
Posted: June 7th, 2014, 8:45 am
by SWAnG
Personally, I feel as though Mission with set tasks is nothing compared to Mission where you find your own pathway. It really pushes your creativity and ingenuity in design. I definitely think there was some ambiguity in what was allowed, but I almost feel as though it's really hard to clarify every single one of those.... Maybe a more responsive FAQ could help this?
Re: Mission Possible C
Posted: June 7th, 2014, 1:41 pm
by Phys1cs
SWAnG wrote:Personally, I feel as though Mission with set tasks is nothing compared to Mission where you find your own pathway. It really pushes your creativity and ingenuity in design. I definitely think there was some ambiguity in what was allowed, but I almost feel as though it's really hard to clarify every single one of those.... Maybe a more responsive FAQ could help this?
It would be interesting if instead of set tasks or lists of transfers, we got objects/things we had to incorporate into the build. Similar to tasks where there are things that must be used, but also similar to transfers where we choose how to incorporate them.
Re: Mission Possible C
Posted: June 7th, 2014, 9:52 pm
by olympiaddict
I definitely agree that the transfers allow for much more unique thinking, and that's why I loved them. the tasks were just much clearer in terms of rules. Again, I'm not sure how to clarify the energy rules better, but if there is a way, making things much less ambiguous while keeping the transfers would give the best possible event in my opinion both creativity and clarity -wise
Re: Mission Possible C
Posted: August 2nd, 2014, 6:24 am
by tanuagg13
Whether or not transfers are listed to be chosen or freely creative, this year's points are probably based on energy transfers again, based on event descriptions on
http://soinc.org/short_event_descriptions. NOTE: THIS IS INFERENCE BASED ON THE SHORT EVENT DESCRIPTION ONLY; THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT.
Science Olympiad Official Short Event Descriptions wrote:
Mission Possible (C) - Prior to the competition, participants will design, build, test and document a Rube Goldberg-like device that completes a required Final Task using a sequence of consecutive energy transfers.