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-   -   Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113981)

dtengineering 19-02-2013 22:43

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
Rather than changing a rule, perhaps it would have been sufficient to add a rule:

"Any discs thrown by a human player that are seen to leave the playing field will result in a 10 point penalty to the offending alliance."


Human players would learn very, very quickly to keep their discs within bounds. Teams could still safely throw discs downfield to floor loaders, and could even aim for the low goals.

Actually, to ease reffing, it could probably be extended to a penalty for any disc leaving the field, whether fired by a robot or thrown by a human. It would be consistant with the guidance that discs are to remain within the bounds of the playing field.

And I'll cut the GDC some slack on this one... they probably tried throwing discs downfield to hit the goals as part of their game testing. They probably didn't do it, however, with the "enthusiasm" of a half-dozen excited teenagers with nothing to lose. I'll even grant them the fact that after observing a potentially dangerous situation that they were obliged to act to limit the danger. I just don't know if they chose the least disruptive way to go about it.

Jason

cgmv123 19-02-2013 22:49

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by dtengineering (Post 1236835)
Rather than changing a rule, perhaps it would have been sufficient to add a rule:

"Any discs thrown by a human player that are seen to leave the playing field will result in a 10 point penalty to the offending alliance."

I'd prefer a cap on the number of white discs that can be thrown. That doesn't get at the whole problem, but it's better than before..

PVCpirate 19-02-2013 22:51

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
Thinking back to 2010: at least they didn't make the change after week 1.

Nick Lawrence 19-02-2013 22:54

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
Colour me unimpressed. I feel bad for the teams who built floor loading mechanisms. How could they not have seen this?

They should have enclosed the field more. End of story.

I hope this is fixed very very soon. If not, I know exactly what kind of robot will win a world championship this year.

-Nick

Tom Line 19-02-2013 23:09

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by PVCpirate (Post 1236851)
Thinking back to 2010: at least they didn't make the change after week 1.

You're the second or third person to say this, and I have to disagree. For teams that chose to forego climbing for floor pickup, 1 week or 3 weeks makes no difference. You aren't going to be redesigning your bot to suddenly make it climb to thirty.

JHammond 19-02-2013 23:17

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
Would not be surprised if the GDC did not anticipate human players throwing discs at a vertical orientation high and hard so that some carried 10+ feet over the field ends or spun out far beyond the corner of a field. In practice these flew very differently than a traditional horizontal Frisbee throw. They were more like missiles than anything at the Nashua event. You'd get 5 or 6 of these high hard throws in the air and it was a bit dicey.

rcmolloy 19-02-2013 23:20

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Nick Lawrence (Post 1236854)
Colour me unimpressed. I feel bad for the teams who built floor loading mechanisms. How could they not have seen this?

They should have enclosed the field more. End of story.

I hope this is fixed very very soon. If not, I know exactly what kind of robot will win a world championship this year.

-Nick

I bet 469's strategic team bought the celebratory champagne (sparkling cider for others) right after the announcement.

On another note, this shouldn't kill gameplay at all. If you have a floor pickup mechanism, you have a much better chance of seeding higher than most of the teams at your competition if utilized well not only during autonomous but teleop as well. Having that one extra component of your robot that can do something most others cannot is just a plus in my opinion.

Trust me, I'm not even upset at this at all. That's a little surprising for me though since I have been trying to figure out the floor pickup problem with my kids for about 4 to 5 weeks. If you're looking to get ahead in the game before everyone else you will most definitely have some way of getting frisbees off the ground and into your robot.

Blackphantom91 19-02-2013 23:21

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Nick Lawrence (Post 1236854)
Colour me unimpressed. I feel bad for the teams who built floor loading mechanisms. How could they not have seen this?

They should have enclosed the field more. End of story.

I hope this is fixed very very soon. If not, I know exactly what kind of robot will win a world championship this year.

-Nick

Care to clue us in on what robot?

On a side note I think it was a bad move to do something this drastic so late. It is unfortunate that many teams put their hard time and effort into design for the rules of the game to change. Many people have spent long weeks designing these soon to be spectacular robots. although, at the end of the day what is done is done. I guess it may lead more into people investigating the 30lbs withholding :ahh: I personally don't like it but I can't gripe there must have been an logistical reason behind it.

connor.worley 19-02-2013 23:24

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
If the San Diego week 0 event showed me anything, there will still be no shortage of disks on the floor.

connor.worley 19-02-2013 23:30

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by jd09cw (Post 1236885)
SOOO looking forward to watching finals on Einstein with 6 - 100% accurate full court shooters... at least 2 robots playing defence on each other for access to the un-protected feeding stations will provide some contrast.

Not.

TOTALLY looking forward to seeing 84" plastic sheetbots shut down full court shooters. :D

Garten Haeska 19-02-2013 23:34

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
When I first read this, my heart dropped. We focused on making our robot pick up this year, mainly in the last 30 seconds was the easiest because of the surplus of Frisbees. Nevertheless, we are still glad we made our robot pick up because we can for sure shoot 4 frisbees in auto, but are still working on getting that 5th one in there.

We cant change it for safety reasons, but with this being said, there are those teams that are happy with the choice, and those who are utterly upset that this came on bag and tag day, and then we have all of the human players that are mad because they cant show off their skills.

Steven Donow 19-02-2013 23:36

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Nick Lawrence (Post 1236854)
Colour me unimpressed. I feel bad for the teams who built floor loading mechanisms. How could they not have seen this?

They should have enclosed the field more. End of story.

I hope this is fixed very very soon. If not, I know exactly what kind of robot will win a world championship this year.

-Nick

I don't know about other teams, but when deciding to do floor loading, "endgame flood" was just an additional benefit and not a major drive behind the design decision to floor load. No matter what, I think the floor will be fairly crowded due to missed shots. Maybe sometime tomorrow I'll do some math, but as of now, I'm just plain tired from build season. Also, while watching the stream of Suffield Shakedown, I think I saw plenty of discs upside down from HP throws, a contrast to most shot discs landing right side up.

And, looking at a video posted from Suffield Shakedown, I think this is definitely a good decision on the GDC's part, to at least in some way limit how much can be thrown in the last 30 seconds. There is most definitely a safety risk involved, and arguably can be seen as a distraction to the audience...

Now, when a thrown disc knocks down the alliance's own robot from climbing...that'll be something...

Karthik 19-02-2013 23:37

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
My general principle is that there should be no significant rules changes after kickoff unless there's a safety issue involved. That's the case here. The GDC was in a very difficult position, having to choose between two unpleasant options; making a significant in-season rule change or leaving a significant safety hazard in play. In my opinion they absolutely made the right choice. Unfortunately, I know that right now this is very little consolation to the affected teams, especially because some of them made their strategic decisions based predicting this storm of frisbees that wasn't envisioned by the GDC.

As for how this will impact game play, there's no denying that this will change the game dynamic, I don't think the change is as large as people are making it out to be. The main value of a floor pickup is extra points that can be scored in the autonomous period; this hasn't been altered. Yes, there will be less discs available in the last 30 seconds of the match, but many of these discs would have been very difficult or even impossible to pick up by most teams. (Flipped over, clumped in piles, etc.) In general there won't be a shortage of discs; In 2012 Teams only made 66% of their shots on the Archimedes division at championship. I expect shooting percentages to be in that ballpark once again, leaving a huge supply of discs on the floor.

The group of people who I feel the worst for right now are the students who have been training and practicing for the past six weeks to be human players. There are definitely going to be some disappointed HPs tonight.

RoboTigers1796 19-02-2013 23:41

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
As others have said, I see this only affecting elims and championships.
Standard qualification matches will still have bountiful discs to pick up in my opinion.
However, I think a lot are over anticipating how many discs will be on the field without the blizzard, remember a lot of what I saw anyway from suffield was the result of not having 6 robots on the field and teams still fine tuning their shooters.
However, once you get to eliminations when there are 6(4?) of the best scorers on the field, I feel the supply on the floor will dissipate quickly before the end of the match, and that's why I'm disappointed to see it go. When it counts the most, what we believed to be an upper hand has turned into a vastly less significant feature.
*I am not trying to complain, I understand the need to take action for safety's sake, just discussing the strategy we had that was lost by the update

LeelandS 19-02-2013 23:50

Re: Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day
 
As a former human player who took great pride in his craft (primarily in 2011, with the tube throwing), I can agree with Karthik when he says there will be some disappointed human players.

I don't see a truly huge change in the game. Yes, I think the GDC may have slipped up on not foreseeing this (even playing Catalyst, I could tell it would be an issue. One second you're lining up for a shot and the next you can't see a darned thing). But the frenzy of frisbees is a serious issue. From fieldside at the Rochester Rally, that "blizzard" is absolutely terrifying. You get 6 people lobbing hard plastic discs of death across the field, someone does get hit or something gets broken. I agree 100% with the GDC in this decision.

No, it's not great to come out with this on the day of stop build. It's actually a really bad thing to do, but the GDC can't just be like "Well, it's a safety issue. But teams have built their robots for six weeks under these rules, so we have to let it go." Yes, teams built their robots under these rules and it really does suck that now those decision made are invalidated. But the GDC has to put their foot down and make a decision, and at the end of the day, safety will always be first, no matter what.


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