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-   -   Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=127633)

mrnoble 09-03-2014 19:38

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
I am dividing the issue of penalties into three categories:

1) Safety. These are non-negotiable, unless it can be shown that the penalties are not sufficient to prevent safety hazards. In that case, the penalties can be augmented (through physical changes to the field, or game play changes), or the penalties can be increased. G40 fits that description for me, and as such I am not in support of reducing it, ever. This year is particularly prone to violent play, and 140 lb. robots are never safe anyway.

2) Logistical challenges. These might be addressed in a number of ways, and as has been shown in the update last week (and numerous times in FRC history before), usually helps alleviate the bulk of the issues. Lexan shields on the bar, an additional ref, additional training for field personnel, software fixes, etc. These are completely legit to discuss and make suggestions, and the intelligent people in the GDC are likely coming up with solutions to these very problems almost as quickly as they occur.

3) Non-safety penalties. If matches are being swung by penalties that, in hindsight, are valued incorrectly (up or down), and they don't involve a potential safety hazard, then it is reasonable to suggest and implement fixes. It is not unfair to teams who competed in earlier weeks to make the game better for those who competed later. There is no possible way FIRST could beta test every level of gameplay enough to prevent some of the problems we've seen, and I'm sure they will continue to fine-tune or overhaul as necessary to make the game more fair and more enjoyable to watch and play.

But no hands anywhere near robots, ever.:mad:

jman4747 09-03-2014 20:00

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mrnoble (Post 1356037)
I am dividing the issue of penalties into three categories:

1) Safety. These are non-negotiable, unless it can be shown that the penalties are not sufficient to prevent safety hazards. In that case, the penalties can be augmented (through physical changes to the field, or game play changes), or the penalties can be increased. G40 fits that description for me, and as such I am not in support of reducing it, ever. This year is particularly prone to violent play, and 140 lb. robots are never safe anyway.



On safety: Words and numbers on paper don't increase safety, action, physical constraints, awareness, and well designed systems do. So far we have little action, no physical constraints, more awareness (many people still are not I'd wager), and many varying robot designs at the moment.

People can still accidentally touch the robot, especially if they aren't aware of the rules. PDF docs can't stop the movement of a student's hand during a match.

On point values: (While less critical than safety) The fate of an alliance doesn't need to hinge on one small mistake by one student on one team if that mistake was in fact small, inconsequential, not particularly unsafe, and innocent. If a student clearly reaches a few inches into the zone with a robot nearby than have at it. Otherwise it isn't worth it.

Nyle 09-03-2014 20:05

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Woolly (Post 1355949)
Also, A more fitting penalty for G40 would be to disable the entire alliance at fault for 5-10 seconds, and give a tech foul if the human player entering the field was strategic or consequential.

This would be an interesting alternative to the current foul system, but it would have to work around a number of potential issues in it’s implementation, so it would be infeasible to implement this year.

If suddenly disabled, some robots may perform actions that could be very undesirable. For instance, my team’s catapult is locked back with an electromagnet prior to firing, so in certain situations a sudden disable could cause us to fire the ball in whatever direction we were facing in, which may be into the stands, significantly increasing the time it would take for the alliance to complete that cycle.

My other major concern would be the potential for a robot to foul during this period. They would be unable to prevent themselves from accidentally catching an opponents ball, back off from a pin, or (if this were in a different game) prevent themselves from hitting an opposing robot in a protected zone. Some of these could be engineered around or fixed with exceptions in the rules, but for others this would not be feasible.

Probably the most viable way to implement this would be to add a third game mode which would allow the code to control the robot, but not allow it to read input from the driver station. This would make most, but not all, of the problems mentioned avoidable.

jmcrawford45 09-03-2014 20:17

This post was written when I was still very emotional about the Arkansas Regional. I would like to apologize to the teams and the personnel that I said harsh words against. 16, 4500, and 3937 did great throughout the competition, including the eliminations. I am sorry that I diverted this thread from a serious discussion about issues with the game to whining about rule inconsistencies.

Damiaen_Florian 09-03-2014 20:48

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
Yes.

A regular foul will still do the job of keeping the human players safe just fine. 20 points is still a significant benefit to the other alliance, giving the incentive to be cautious while playing, and for the teams who don't have extreme offensive power it won't make it nearly impossible to come back from in a match, as we've seen in a lot of matches thus far.

sircedric4 09-03-2014 21:18

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by jmcrawford45 (Post 1356069)
The original post was redacted so I will remove the copy here. :-)

I have never claimed that we were biased against, just that to an outside observer it may appear that way because the penalties were not showing up real time. Further review of our Regional Finals match on the drive home showed the penalties that we incurred were legitimate penalties. Our disappointment is not with the Arkansas Regional, its personnel, venue, or other teams at the event. We had a wonderful time and wish the winning alliance all the best in their future games and at World Championship. They won the games playing with the same rules we played to.

Our beef is with the harsh and subjective penalties associated with the game Aerial Assist. Being on the field is a high stress environment for anyone much less over-stressed refs and high school students. Mistakes are easily made, and having so many penalties in the game, and making them worth so much is our issue. An inconsequential mistake that happens to be observed at that time can cost a team their game. That is why I agree with this petition that the technical fouls should be lowered, changed, or the safety zone improved to decrease the likelihood of bad feelings about this game.

jmcrawford45 09-03-2014 23:15

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by sircedric4 (Post 1356106)
Our beef is with the harsh and subjective penalties associated with the game Aerial Assist. Being on the field is a high stress environment for anyone much less over-stressed refs and high school students. Mistakes are easily made, and having so many penalties in the game, and making them worth so much is our issue. An inconsequential mistake that happens to be observed at that time can cost a team their game. That is why I agree with this petition that the technical fouls should be lowered, changed, or the safety zone improved to decrease the likelihood of bad feelings about this game.

I want to apologize to you for associating you with my above post, as it was entirely out of line both for FIRST and this site. At the time, I was still bitter about a game and regional that was entirely different than what I expected it to be. The mountain of foul points awarded after matches and the field issues in this year's game makes it easy for someone as stubborn as I to say "it's the field team's fault" or "this was rigged." When it's all said and done, the alliance that best played the game and adhered to the rules advanced from the Arkansas Regional. The personnel at the Arkansas Regional worked hard to provide a game that was a lot of fun. I deeply regret this post and would like to ask that it not be associated by the reader with my team.

Swan217 09-03-2014 23:53

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
Just to add statistical fuel to the fire, 11% of matches in week 1 were "overturned" by fouls (Alliance w' more points lost). 11% of week 2 matches were also overturned by fouls. If you have 19 matches (including elims), odds are at least 2 of them will be decided by penalty points.

Travis Hoffman 10-03-2014 02:04

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
Regardless of point value or when they are entered into the system, call the fouls consistently. When something is a foul one match and the exact same something isn't called the next, it's incredibly aggravating, and no amount of "they are just overworked volunteers", "it's the FMS", etc. is going to make teams quiet down. Teams should voice their concerns even LOUDER until the GDC acts and the game is restored to some semblance of consistency.

Most MLB teams can live with an umpire who sucks at calling balls and strikes equally for both teams. But if you get inconsistent calls that favor one team over the others, watch the sparks fly.

Michael Corsetto 10-03-2014 02:24

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
My drive team has two coaches. Our Drive Coach and Our HP Coach. Our HP Coach is responsible for training every other HP we are with in Quals. Every match. Pre-match, she will take the HP's aside with a ball and show them how to the throw a ball into the field or into their robot. Every match. And almost every match, she tells me just how little HP's know about the rules and the game. This isn't new, often HP's don't know what is going on. What is new is their ability to literally throw away matches with the wave of their hand. We went 19 matches without a G40 at IE, but odds are our luck will run out soon...

This is a problem. FIRST, please fix it.

-Mike

Meredith Novak 10-03-2014 02:30

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto (Post 1356291)
My drive team has two coaches. Our Drive Coach and Our HP Coach. Our HP Coach is responsible for training every other HP we are with in Quals. Every match. Pre-match, she will take the HP's aside with a ball and show them how to the throw a ball into the field or into their robot. Every match. And almost every match, she tells me just how little HP's know about the rules and the game. This isn't new, often HP's don't know what is going on. What is new is their ability to literally throw away matches with the wave of their hand. We went 19 matches without a G40 at IE, but odds are our luck will run out soon...

This is a problem. FIRST, please fix it.

-Mike

We stressed this as well at Arkansas and FRC 16 human players were coaching others at the practice field. They did pretty well avoiding the penalties in the qualification matches, but the stress of finals is tough and they began getting careless; especially the less experienced teams.

PayneTrain 10-03-2014 02:37

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
The foul points are not the problem, were not the problem, and will never be the problem. The problems are the same you run into every year, but more obvious than before by more people.

-Teams are not adequately prepared for game elements that have remained unchanged since day 1 of build season. This is an open field game with two total scoring objects. Anyone who has bothered to understand FRC or any other game could have pointed out the potential for heavy defense that may be hard to judge. You had 6 weeks to design for it. The "battle scars" happen every year, but a few people seem to have decided that this year it is easy to blame the game for being different from recent affairs than to blame inadequate preparation. When 422 broke our drivetrain, we went back and said "how can we redesign this so it is more robust?" We didn't ask "how many petitions do we have to start on Chief Delphi to change the game to suit us?" You had practice day at your events to work with your human player under the new rule. Whether or not the "safety zone" ruling is ideal or not, there is a way the human player can function in his/her box and have zero to no fouls ever occur. I made it a point to make sure the human player on our team never fouled. We worked with other alliance partners who had some real all star human players to refine the technique we used. if you wanted more clarification, you had the driver meeting, practice day, and the question box to voice concerns and ask questions about G40. There were as many teams at Alamo that never committed a foul on G40 as there were that committed multiple violations of it. Everybody gets the same manual. Everybody has access to the same team updates. Read them. Know them. Love them.

-Teams are not adequately prepared for alliance partners to have no idea what they are doing. This is a problem that is made much more significant by the way the game is played this year. Great teams and good teams will lose matches because their alliance partners will misrepresent, underperform, be ignorant of rules, have unforseen issues, lack basic understanding of the game... the list of fun goes on and on. With only one game piece this year, this should have been anticipated and adjusted to. Not to mention, changing foul points wouldn't do much. So an alliance partner violates G40. It will affect your ranking, which is unfortunate, but you playing your game is good enough for scout teams. If you have an alliance partner in eliminations that commits a technical foul, that is ENTIRELY on the alliance itself, with an exception for all rulings that I am about to get to.

Even though everyone has been conditioned to target, complain, and in return, receive hivemind karma from the annual Greater Toronto East Regional thread and drama factory, even 1114 representatives said that the fouls were the alliance's burden. So what if an opposing ball lands in your robot? For once, FIRST made it very clear that that kind of motion will be called as a technical foul every time, they made it clear that they will not change the intent of the rule, and stressed to teams that it was imortant to design around that situation not happening if you want to avoid the foul. If I lost a match on that foul I wouldn't necessarily be happy about it, but I wouldn't go full rage against the machine over it either--the rule has been clear for a while.

-Other issues in fouls dont necessarily rely in the points they give up, but how the fouls are administered. Referees, to my knowledge, aren't given an extensive, consistent supplement on the vague, subjective rules in the manual. While pinning is a very easy foul to call (much like a false start in football) some things like opponent possesion via repeated taps of the ball, exactly how to call G28 violations, etc., are far more subjective issues (subjective like judging at the 3000 winter Olympic events that are judged). The lack of concreteness to work with results in inconsistent calls. While the referee is consulting the angel and devil on their shoulder about a violation of G12, they could miss a G40 happening right next to them, while a G28 is almost certainly occuring at midfield, but by the time the tablet is mashed at like a phone during a Flappy Bird session, it's hard ot tell who-hit-who there, and there was probably an assist as well during all of that, and now there's a bumper on the field... see what I mean?

Foul points aren't the issue. It's the teams, the partners, and the calls. The same as it ever was, but now with more obvious ramifications and as a result, more bellyaching over the wrong things.

CTHP 10-03-2014 03:10

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
I agree with many who have posted here that the 50 point penalty for a Technical Foul is excessive. It has been a game changer in some spirited matches; game play that was otherwise ruined by such an excessive penalty. And except for repeated cases of premeditated wrong-doing, how is it that one referee can assess this penalty on a team for a single occurrence of a mistake? The rules were written to cover repeated events but unfortunately included so-called 'strategic' (premeditated) events too. Apparently a single referee can read the minds of the drivers and separate innocent legal game play from a strategic, premeditated, intentional foul.

That being said, the 50 point penalty must remain since that is the way the game was designed. You can't change it now because so many others have already been judged and eliminated by it. Better to re-think it for the next season and consider that maybe more than one referee should personally and visually verify it before penalizing a team.

This could be the standard for a Technical Foul (taken directly from G22): "Violation: FOUL. If continuous or repeated violations, TECHNICAL FOUL.".

For a game (Aerial Assist) that depends on ejecting balls into the air with a suggested robot design specification to catch these balls, it seems cRaZy to say that the opponents ball was possessed by an a competitors robot just because it happens to land in their frame/chassis, as suggested by G12. Now if the competing robot drove around for the next 10 seconds with the ball keeping it from the other team, then we have an extended, strategic, maybe even repeated foul situation here but not just because in lands there momentarily. The same goes for balls colliding in mid-air, also described by G12.

In short, the foul is excessive and needs to be reassessed. Also, visual confirmation from more than one referee should be required before assessing such a large penalty. If not enough referees, then maybe a quick post-game examination of video evidence by the judging panel to verify that the single ref saw what he (she) said they saw.

:cool:

Tristan Lall 10-03-2014 05:00

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by PayneTrain (Post 1356296)
The foul points are not the problem, were not the problem, and will never be the problem. The problems are the same you run into every year, but more obvious than before by more people.

-Teams are not adequately prepared for game elements that have remained unchanged since day 1 of build season. This is an open field game with two total scoring objects. Anyone who has bothered to understand FRC or any other game could have pointed out the potential for heavy defense that may be hard to judge. You had 6 weeks to design for it. The "battle scars" happen every year, but a few people seem to have decided that this year it is easy to blame the game for being different from recent affairs than to blame inadequate preparation. When 422 broke our drivetrain, we went back and said "how can we redesign this so it is more robust?" We didn't ask "how many petitions do we have to start on Chief Delphi to change the game to suit us?" You had practice day at your events to work with your human player under the new rule. Whether or not the "safety zone" ruling is ideal or not, there is a way the human player can function in his/her box and have zero to no fouls ever occur. I made it a point to make sure the human player on our team never fouled. We worked with other alliance partners who had some real all star human players to refine the technique we used. if you wanted more clarification, you had the driver meeting, practice day, and the question box to voice concerns and ask questions about G40. There were as many teams at Alamo that never committed a foul on G40 as there were that committed multiple violations of it. Everybody gets the same manual. Everybody has access to the same team updates. Read them. Know them. Love them.

-Teams are not adequately prepared for alliance partners to have no idea what they are doing. This is a problem that is made much more significant by the way the game is played this year. Great teams and good teams will lose matches because their alliance partners will misrepresent, underperform, be ignorant of rules, have unforseen issues, lack basic understanding of the game... the list of fun goes on and on. With only one game piece this year, this should have been anticipated and adjusted to. Not to mention, changing foul points wouldn't do much. So an alliance partner violates G40. It will affect your ranking, which is unfortunate, but you playing your game is good enough for scout teams. If you have an alliance partner in eliminations that commits a technical foul, that is ENTIRELY on the alliance itself, with an exception for all rulings that I am about to get to.

Even though everyone has been conditioned to target, complain, and in return, receive hivemind karma from the annual Greater Toronto East Regional thread and drama factory, even 1114 representatives said that the fouls were the alliance's burden. So what if an opposing ball lands in your robot? For once, FIRST made it very clear that that kind of motion will be called as a technical foul every time, they made it clear that they will not change the intent of the rule, and stressed to teams that it was imortant to design around that situation not happening if you want to avoid the foul. If I lost a match on that foul I wouldn't necessarily be happy about it, but I wouldn't go full rage against the machine over it either--the rule has been clear for a while.

-Other issues in fouls dont necessarily rely in the points they give up, but how the fouls are administered. Referees, to my knowledge, aren't given an extensive, consistent supplement on the vague, subjective rules in the manual. While pinning is a very easy foul to call (much like a false start in football) some things like opponent possesion via repeated taps of the ball, exactly how to call G28 violations, etc., are far more subjective issues (subjective like judging at the 3000 winter Olympic events that are judged). The lack of concreteness to work with results in inconsistent calls. While the referee is consulting the angel and devil on their shoulder about a violation of G12, they could miss a G40 happening right next to them, while a G28 is almost certainly occuring at midfield, but by the time the tablet is mashed at like a phone during a Flappy Bird session, it's hard ot tell who-hit-who there, and there was probably an assist as well during all of that, and now there's a bumper on the field... see what I mean?

Foul points aren't the issue. It's the teams, the partners, and the calls. The same as it ever was, but now with more obvious ramifications and as a result, more bellyaching over the wrong things.

That's pretty much how I see it as well. While I recognize the potential utility of regulatory changes to compensate for undesirable conditions, I don't think that's a good resolution in this case.

First of all, we're not talking about matters of law that have far-reaching and severe consequences; we're talking about a game that everyone is playing because they want to, knowing that the game has a set of rules that are intended to apply to the exact situations at issue.

Also, it's not clear that there's even a truly equitable resolution here. Might it not be worse, overall, if the first two weeks were played with a fundamentally different set of strategic tradeoffs and enforcement priorities? What does that do for teams' expectations in the long term? Is it fair to the teams who designed to the original set of rules? Or who played during the first two weeks and won't have a chance to play again?

TheMadCADer 10-03-2014 06:22

Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better
 
A lot of people seem to be hung up on the safety factor of the human players, but I don't think that's a valid argument for keeping the foul, I'd say its more of an argument against using humans. This is a robotics competition.

What I think the GDC should have done was make every team build an inbounding robot along with their normally fielded robot. At the times where the pedestal is dark in the game as-designed the inbound robot is disabled and the human player pre-loads it with a ball. When it is enabled you have a single button (built in, right next to the E-stop) to initiate a preprogrammed inbound action, then the inbounder is disabled once the ball is back in play (when a ref enters the first assist). To ensure the inbounding robot cannot activate while being pre-loaded, only the human player can push this button. Inbound robots would be allowed to freely extend into the field and touch alliance robots.

Ambitious teams could build inbound robots capable of catching and place them down field to do the popular truss catch routine that currently uses a human player. This could earn a small point bonus (say, 5 points to an inbound robot and 15 for a normal catch). Inbound robots placed down field would be enabled at all times and would allow for the human player to act as a third driver with inputs limited only by the current operator console space limits. These robots would be roped off with a safety barrier during the match. If no inbounder is placed down field and in all other cases, balls that exit the field will be thrown back into play with reckless abandon by field reset crew members at a significant distance from the field. If you want to keep control of your ball, then keep control of your ball.

The six week build period is busy enough without an extra robot to design and build. As such, inbound robots would not be bagged and are not subject to withholding allowance rules.


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