paper: Spanking the Children
 

Thread created automatically to discuss a document in CD-Media.

Spanking the Children by Jim Zondag

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Very interesting read. Cool to read some of the history behind the penalties in past FIRST games.

I would agree with you on the 50 point penalties this year. They pretty much end the match for any team that gets one.

In Waterford, we received 50 points due to the other alliance ingesting our ball. This happened when someone on our alliance was trying to pick up the ball and pushed into the opposing teams intake. The crowd was very upset when they were given this penalty because it was clear they did not try to intake the ball, it was pushed up into them, even though the team that pushed it into them was trying to pick it up themselves.

Though the rules are very clear on this; G12..."A BALL that becomes unintentionally lodged on a ROBOT will be considered POSSESSED by the ROBOT. It is important to design your ROBOT so that it is impossible to inadvertently or intentionally POSSESS an opponent’s BALL."

This does make a very difficult design constraint for teams.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

That was a very interesting read, and alot of good information for us that have only been around a few years.

One big thing I've noticed is alot of the scores seem really inflated. Last time penalties had a large influence on games, it took away from your score, instead of giving it to the other team. So it does look like the scores are inflated, but if they worked like the old way, I bet we'd see alot more 0 score matches.

Im my opinion, low number of game piece games will always be harder to correctly penalize. Each piece has a much larger outcome on the final score, and its really hard to calculate penalties for this. Last year most penalties handed out, at least where I saw, were worth 1 game piece, where i'd guess about 15 disks on average were scored. This year, the most common penalty is worth 1 full cycle, but alliances have much more trouble scoring that, so the penalty to scoring ratio is much higher this year then last, and in fact any game I can remember since 2010.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

This is very cool.

Robots with 6 cim two speed drives, which now can be bought, are very, very fast this year, and high speed collisions between robots going 16 fps are destructive, especially if a ball pickup device is involved. Back before districts, some teams would play between 16 - 19 matches at one event to qualify for the championship. Now, teams who will end up at CMP will have played over 20 rounds (not included replays) at each of at least two district events, plus matches at the district chamionship. Reliability is a great feature for this year.

EDIT: There's one thing I disagree with. As a spectator game, 2003 was better. Autonomous was exciting, with lots of robots going quickly, smashing through bins, getting air off the ramp, and smashing into other robots, and teleop just turned into battlebots.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Great paper Jim. I still remember your reaction at Championship in 2008 when the opposing alliance crashed into your drivers station wall in autonomous and knocked your controls off the shelf. When your driver team jumped in to catch it, your. Team was penalized. You went OFF!

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

As someone who didn't compete in FRC until 2011, this was a very interesting read, especially for the history. Thank you for sharing this.

I suppose I hadn't completely realized how good the last three games have been.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Can't wait to hear this story ;) .

As for 2013, the only penalty gripe I really had with it was the massive penalty for inadvertently touching a robot in the act of climbing, which was worth around 50 points. Fortunately, this happened rarely, although it did happen to us at Buckeye (our back end swung into 1551 while they were hanging in QF 3-3 and we were trying to get to our end of the field. They shook on the bar for what felt like an eternity, but ended up staying on the bar. They got assessed an automatic climb (+30 pts), we were assessed a technical foul (+20 pts), and their original 10 pt. climb was still valid).

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Part of the problem this year is that the referees just had too much to watch, and too many of the penalties were close judgement calls. It was impossible for the referees to see all they needed to see and quickly make fair judgements. We saw numerous referee errors, and who can blame them?

I agree that it made a miserable game. We lost a number of matches that we should have won, and vice versa, because of penalties.

Games really need to be designed so that penalties aren't a big factor. It is possible, as Jim recalls in his paper.

And maybe 2 CIMS are enough motor for a drive train, (4 CIMS if mecanum drive). This constant bashing doesn't really improve the game.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Can anyone elaborate what the "Wildstang Pinata" is from 2004 that would be great.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

This was a truly awesome read and I agree 100%. This game is on the tip of being so good, but it is so bad because of these penalties.

And the worst part is that it hurts the young teams. The experienced teams make sure they are aware of the penalties and risks and that their partners are aware, but a young team with a great robot doesn't have the experience to make sure these things don't happen nor should they. This should not be what wins and losses a team events.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Thanks Jim. This puts thing in perspective (in relation to past games.)

I am summarizing data in support of your pledge for a change. Will share it shortly.

Billy.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I'll let Karthik fill in the gory details, but suffice it to say that the reffing was extremely inconsistent between fields at Championship. 1114 and 330 played on a field with very lenient reffing--you could tear someone's robot apart and probably get away with it (Again, ask Karthik--I think he's got a better memory on that one that I do). OTOH, on Einstein, a simple robot-robot high collision that was a result of two robots going to the same scoring space and just happened to tip one over resulted in a disable-DQ to the other alliance.



This particular item rather bugs me. I would REALLY like to know exactly how many current GDC members have EVER been ON an FRC team, in any capacity whatsoever. Some of their rulings in the past have been pretty lousy, to say the least. (My favorite question was dished out by FRC116 in 2011, I suspect by Mr. Lavery himself after he left the GDC, asking exactly what in the rules prohibited a certain activity, given that it had previously been allowed by Q&A and appeared to fit all the rules for the minibots. In the process, the author made the entire GDC look like a bunch of... well, I won't say exactly what. Wish I could find it; it's in an old Q&A system.) With all the "possession" questions they had early in the season this year, it still took two or three updates to clarify an item that could REALLY affect the game--and the fact that clarification was needed was shown by the sheer number of Q&As on the topic.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

The GDC really put themselves in quite a jiffy this year by only giving alliances one way to score (with the ball) and giving that score a variable value (based on assists). If assists were scored as they occurred, instead of a massive score at the end of the cycle, it would be perfectly reasonable for fouls to be worth 10 points and technicals to be worth 30 points. As it stands though, illegal actions have a drastically variable impact on the game.

If a robot that is not holding a ball gets pinned at the start of the match for 8 seconds, the alliance of the pinned robot is only marginally hurt (certainly no more than 20 points). However, if, with 10 seconds left in a match, a robot holding a ball with 3 assists on it is pinned for 8 seconds, the alliance with the pinned robot could likely be hurt by 40 points.

This is not to say that I would not still be in favor of reducing the value of penalties, but we do have to think of the consequences of doing so.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Thanks for this Jim, really well done.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ght=curie+2007

The short version is that the game had points for elevating your partners so a lot of teams built dedicated ramp bots that had little ability to manipulate the game piece and no way to positively contribute outside the final 30 seconds. Additionally the tube scoring was exponential, so stopping your opponents from placing tubes on specific locations or at all was really valuable for a ramp bot because you could be around 3 ideally placed tubes down on the scoring structure and win with a double elevation.

1114 was a really good offensive robot and 48 was a really good ramp robot specializing in tough defence. (The structure in the middle of the field was over 300 pounds and the robot interaction was moving it around the field)

Here is a video of the match but it doesn't show anything

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

My team (910) still talks about this one...it's hard to forget about your alliance getting red carded on Einstein.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Jim,

This is an excellent paper. I never realized/forgot that contact inside the bumper zone was never in its own class, and I never knew that penalties started in FRC at the same time I did.

I think your spell check may have gone and changed "Aerial" to "Arial" though. Or you may have something against sans-serif fonts. :)

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

As high as penalty values are this year, according to past years tech foul point values are consistent. A tech foul in 2012 was 9 points (a full hopper of 3 balls in the 3 point goal). In 2013 it was 50 points 20 points (a full hopper of 4 alliance disks in the pyramid goal). In 2014 it is 50 points (a 3 assist goal with a catch over the truss).

The GDC seems to pick a value for the tech foul so that there is no situation where it is more beneficial to take the foul than it is to try to play "clean" defense.

Do I think that it is too easy to get a tech foul this year? Yes, some infractions should not be considered automatic technical fouls. Do I think that 50 points is what the value of those fouls should be? Also yes, it is the same logic that set the point values in previous years.

I wish that there were a foul level between regular and technical. Something that was more serious than 20 points but less than 50. Or maybe just more fouls moved from 50 points down to 20 now that the GDC can see the average score of most games.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Except that in 2012 and 2013, you could have three robots with full hoppers. In 2014, you can only have one robot with a full hopper.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I hadn't really thought of it this way before. Wouldn't it suck if your robot was holding a 30 point ball, lining up to shoot in the last ten seconds of the match, and then was pinned for 8 seconds? If the value of the fouls was significantly lower, it would be "worth it" for the other team to draw that foul. Intentionally fouling isn't "in the spirit of FIRST," and the point value of these fouls makes a lot more sense now.

Not to say that everything about this year's game is perfect, but I'm certainly finding it harder to complain about the value of technical fouls this year.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Then theoretically a foul is more damaging because there is only one robot scoring. One foul this year could potentially stop an entire alliance from scoring whereas a foul in previous years slows down the alliance 33% (pseudo-math, I know but I'm not sure how else to look at it without some serious analysis).

By this logic, a tech foul should be actually worth more points this year because it can be more harmful against the scoring alliance.

I think that you are with a lot of people on this one. Most people don't see that the logic behind the values of the fouls is to rule out any situation where it would be beneficial just to take the foul. Imagine if the last 30 seconds of a match became like the last 2 minutes of a basketball game where the losing team actually benefits from fouling in many cases. Even though these cases seem ludicrous, FIRST teams will find a loophole if there is one. I imagine that it wouldn't seem so ludicrous if it was a viable strategy one year, like in 2004 when Jim said teams would force penalties by ramming the opponents into their goals.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

"theoretically" is different from "practically".

Practically:

When a foul occurs, the percentage of time that it affects a robot that has 50 pts in the hopper (very low), compared to the # of times a robot has a full hopper of discs or basketballs (very high) in 2012 and 2013.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Good point.

I think it's important that point values for fouls and technical fouls be high enough that it's never in a team's rational self-interest to commit a foul. IMO, the values should be high enough that the foul will cost the team at least as much as the scoring opportunity they prevented by committing the foul.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

On the topic of "theoretically" vs "practically" think back last year when 50pt fouls were called for bumping a robot that was attempting to do its 10pt climb.

Practically:
When a foul occurred, the percentage of time that it affected a robot that was capable of a 30 pt climb was (very low).

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

The point of this entire discussion about technical fouls has nothing to do with strategically incurred fouls. I think everyone is in agreement that that kind of action should be penalized harshly. The problem with technical fouls this year is that inadvertent and inconsequential technical fouls happen so often and can bring alliances to the point of despair so much that it's become a joke.

What percentage of G40 penalties have been assessed where the human player was actually in danger of getting injured? Do robots that unintentionally possess opposing alliances' balls ever hold onto it for a meaningful amount of time?

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

In what proportion of matches would this occur? We already know that a 50pt tech foul would swing 53% of matches.

Lets assume for a moment that all tech fouls are now worth 30 points. In your case, in order for it to be worth it to take the foul an alliance must be down less than 10pts (40-30). In what proportion of matches is the winning margin less than 10? Very few. In what number of those does an alliance have a 30point ball in the last 8 seconds? Even fewer.

Would you be in favor of reducing the value of a tech foul to 40 points?

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Wasn't there a discussion last year about teams intentionally breaking the rules because it would have been worth it, pointwise? I think it was concluded that a yellow card would go out for multiple intentional violations and the violating team would probably be ostracized.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

It doesn't matter. The GDC has stated the intent of this rule to keep this from inadvertently happening. I am glad that folks are starting to take them seriously. I would much rather have a high foul value than have a student get injured. This rule was also edited to allow access to the restricted zone when a robot wasn't near.


We all read the same rule book. We all know the rules. We have to play by them whether we like them or not.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I think we can all agree some fouls are reasonable. I can see a 50-point foul for pinning being completely okay in some cases.

What I think isn't okay is the possessing an opponent's ball foul. This past weekend, we had a difficult qualifying match, and our alliance was playing incredibly. We had over 100 points, and then a ball dropped seemingly from out of nowhere right into our robot.

Everyone was astonished, and our drivers got rid of the ball right away, however it was assessed as a 50-pt technical foul and we lost the match by 14 points.

In my opinion either the rules need to be less harsh, maybe some clause constituting intent in a case like that, or the foul needs to be worth less. If a tech foul was even 30 points, we would have won that match we worked so hard to win.

We ended up making an adjustment for eliminations that would prevent a ball from falling in the way it did, but it cost us weight, some catching ability, and time that could have been spent otherwise improving functionality. In fact, the addition inhibited our functionality to a degree.

It might sound like I'm just complaining wildly, but stuff like that could have cost us the regional. It cost 1114 a regional already.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I am completely in favor of keeping HPs safe. That's why I asked the question. But the 50-point penalty for doing it (based on referees' eyes) is extreme in inconsequential occurrences. If the "high foul value" were upped to 100 points, would that be OK? What about 200?

We have to play by the rules, sure. If a team on our alliance said that they disagreed with a rule in the manual and would therefore disobey it in our next match, there might be some literal spanking going on. But FIRST also has to recognize when the rules are bad and should be fixed.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Here is the summary result of my poll.

78 - would like to see a change
27 - do not wish to implement a change

The detailed suggestions/reasons can be found in the link.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I don't know if it's just me being annoyed, or if it's an actual problem, but:

At Escanaba this weekend, we were up one game in quarterfinals. However, our alliance was assessed a G28 tech foul for entering the frame perimeter, costing us the match 101-102. We then lost the third match for a variety of reasons. So, if the foul were anything less, we would have moved to semifinals. Also, about 50% of the other alliance's score was that one tech foul.

I know we don't want undue contact, but given the game, this will happen fairly frequently. I know, we even have quite a few scratches on the inside of our robot. But we have the vast majority of the robot hiding behind the bumpers, so there is very little to damage without really getting into the bot.

The loss was unfortunate, but it is what it is. However, the penalty value seems out-of-whack with the real severity of the problem. Also, the assessment of "intent" for G28 seems potentially arbitrary.

</rant over>

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

This is a really nice summary of penalties in FRC for those of us who weren't around back when there were none.

Here's an idea of how the game could be better balanced. Change the values of the penalties to:
-10 Points for Foul
-20 Points for Tech Foul
-60 Points for Misconduct Foul

Misconduct Fouls would apply for intentional or extended (>10 sec.) possession of the opponents ball and contacting an opponent during auto while out of position (makes the opportunity costs/punishments sensible for strategies aimed at illegally blocking a 3-ball hot auto, such as 254's). Misconduct Fouls could also carry a yellow card with them if that would help deter these actions.

Unintentional possession of the opponents ball that lasts less than 10 seconds would be a Tech Foul, but only 20 points.

Everything else stays the same, just new point values for the Foul and Tech Foul.

Please GDC, change this.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I understand why the technical fouls are so high this year, with only one game piece it would be easy to completely shut down an opposing alliance's scoring by just pinning the robot with the ball or stealing their ball. The problem I have is that fact that it seems like every infraction this year results in a technical foul and most of the time, a loss. Minor infractions that don't affect the flow of the match shouldn't be an automatic loss.

I really wish the GDC would go through and apply their standard "if you break rule X, foul. If rule X is broken repeatedly or deliberately, technical foul and possible red card" language to most of the penalties in this game. Then the ref's would have the option of calling a basic foul for all the penalties that really didn't have a noticeable impact on the other alliance.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

My solution would be to drastically reduce the foul points for most fouls. If a team accidentally grabs an opponents ball, or momentarily breaks the plane of the low goal, the alliance wouldn't get destroyed. However, if the alliance were to do this again and again, or intentionally, then they could get bigger fouls.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Does anyone have statistics on the proportion of technical fouls to regular fouls? If there are more technical fouls than regular fouls (which I would bet on), then the system is probably flawed, and some of the technical fouls should be reduced to regular fouls.

EDIT: I have answered my own question here.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I grabbed the FRC-Spy data: about 10% of all matches are decided by fouls, but
Here's a breakdown by event:

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

So you mentioned "bad design" of the human-player stations on the side of the field. I completely agree with you and I think that if there were a wall near the human player stations, it would solve the problem that FIRST states the (controversial and penalty prone) "safety-zone" tries to solve: safety.

This game is obviously defense-heavy, and there are the necessary ball-intake systems. I have yet to see an intake that does not go outside of the robot's frame perimeter. These two aspects do not play well together. A good driver can avoid most "out-of-safety-zone" penalties, but with ball collection near the side of the field, and then you mix some defense in, things can get hairy very fast.

When the human player inbounds the ball to the robot it is a very precise movement (I guess it depends on the strategy), because if the ball misses or bounces out of the recieving robot, it can roll very far away. Now, they return the ball to the human player in order to give that alliance the best control of their game piece as possible. Yes, the human player can make a better decision about ball placement (strategy-wise) than a volunteer or ref can, but it is not perfect. Human players are now forced to fear the inbounding of a ball. This either involves what our team dubbed, "the T-rex arms", or standing as far back from the field as possible (while still in the box) and lobbing the ball into the field. To get to the point; forcing the human player to fear the field and the ball slows the game down and does nothing to increase safety. (One could argue that it makes it less safe, because some teams tell their human players to keep their hands in their pockets to avoid 50pt penalties. How can you prepare for 3lb, 24in diameter balls moving at high speeds if your hands are in your pocket?)

To get to my suggested solution before this dissolves into a crazy rant: Install a short wall, say 3-4ft tall, that sits on the "safety-zone" tape marks. This wall would be a lexan sheet supported by a metal frame. It would do two things; prevent robots from putting extensions outside of the field (or out of the safety zone, whatever), and prevent the human players from accidentily putting their hands in the potentially harmful path of robots. The human player would still be able to inbound the ball by just rolling it over the top of the wall (which would be relatively easy for anyone over 4ft tall) I honestly think that a physical wall would serve a better function than an invisible plane marked by yellow gaffer's tape.

Just my $0.02
/end semi-rant

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Yeah, the issue was discussed here, but I'm not sure that anyone ever attempted it. If they had, they would have been inaugural members of my blacklist of FRC teams to avoid.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Well done. I hope the GDC reads this.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I don't really know how I feel about this paper.

The thing that sticks out most to me is that it seems like Jim thinks 2011, 2012, and 2013 are examples of how a FRC game SHOULD be designed, while personally I found two of those games to be some of my least favorite (2011 for the completely overpowered minibot, and 2012 because objectively defensive play was next to worthless). I enjoy sports that celebrate good, clean, physical contact, like a hockey check or a football tackle or even an outfielder dive or home-base collision (while they're still allowed to do that). The excessive amount of "Safe Zones" in these three games made any physicality almost moot, becoming a game of who-can-score-the-most (NBA basketball anyone?). Personally I missed the robot collisions and rigorous defense of old. I find this game a breath of fresh air in that aspect.

Regarding tech. penalties, 50pt opposing ball penalties make sense to me as stated earlier in this thread, given the ball's ability to be worth up to 40pts at any given time. You want to make committing the penalty always worse than the action it prevents.
But, I feel that a G40 should only be a regular foul. Keeping it a foul maintains the safety incentive, but 50pt is awfully excessive in the name of safety. G28 should also be regular fouls, especially in the case of a robot (say red) getting pushed into scoring the opposing alliance's ball (blue) into their own (blue) goal by the opposing (blue) alliance! I saw this happen multiple times at multiple events and it still doesn't quite make sense to me why it's worth so much.

And the last thing (that actually kind of bothered me), Jim's been doing this for so much longer than I have (only since 2006), so I know there must be something (multiple things) about it that keeps him coming back, but there was so much negativity in describing every pre-Logomotion game that it almost sounded to me like he hated the games before 2011. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Jim stated that he thinks FRC should be designed as a spectator sport. There's nothing exciting about 4 robot scrums in a corner of the field while everyone tries to acquire/keep teams from acquiring the sole game piece.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

The problem is that playing defense is significantly easier than accomplishing a game's scoring objectives.

If I want to defend, I need a good drivetrain, a good driver, and a robust machine.

If I want to score, I also need a good drivetrain, a good driver, and a robust machine (in order to survive the defense that will me played on me). And one or more game piece intaking/handling mechanisms, game piece scoring mechanisms, software and sensors to coordinate my mechanisms, an operator interface to control my mechanisms...

Hence, building an effective scoring robot is objectively more difficult than building an effective defensive robot. This means that there will generally be more effective defenders than effective scorers, in a rules vacuum. Games without rules to encourage scoring invariably turn into Battle Bots, where the victor is the last robot standing. As Jim explained, many early games suffered from this problem. A handful of games have instituted penalties and put the penalty risk on the scoring robot, which just tips the scales towards defense even more strongly.

Safe zones and other rules that put the penalty risk on the defender have evolved over the past few years as a way to tip the scales back towards a level playing field. Defense was still a huge part of the game in 2011-2013, but it revolved more around defending/hoarding game pieces than around smashing and pinning robots (though there were still plenty of big hits).

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

You read this wrong, this paper is about penalties, not about robot games.
I always love many things about almost every robot game, but I usually dislike many things about the way that FIRST handles penalties. This paper is about the dislikes and is focused on the problem of the day.

What type of game teams prefer is up to them. FIRST tries to change it up every year to provide a new engineering game challenge. I will say that I could build one good robot to play defense, and then just redeploy the same basic thing year after year after year regardless of the game. Yawn. It's effectiveness would be limited by the allowable defense rules of the game each year, but it wouldn't require much in the way of new design or features each year, since defense rarely does. Contrast this with playing offense, where completely new and unique solutions are required each year and require major engineering effort to refine to world class functionality. If FIRST is about Engineering (and Dean seems to convey that it is), then rising to the annual challenge is a big part of what this sport is about.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Since Jim mentioned it, here's the match that we referred to as Wildstang Tetherball from 2004. We knew that the Martians were going to play violent D on us so we tried to hang, but didn't quite get up in time. They pushed us all over the place as we were trying to pull up and eventually the knot in the spectra cable that was in the hook pulled itself through the aluminum. The funny thing though was that they focused so much on beating us and 386 up that we were still able to score enough points to win the match.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

This happened to us. We were lined up for a shot against the 1pt goal and the other alliance tried to hit/block us when there was a ball in between us and they ended up pushing our ball out of the robot and forcing (not on purpose or not even accidentally) their ball into our robot.

They said it was called because of our intake roller was on, even though it needed to be on to give us the best shot and keep our ball in.

They said to us exactly what the rules said. But the problem with that is if you make it hard to take in the opponent's ball, you make it hard to take in your ball.

This was also the game decider for that match (which would've been awesome because it was against 67);)

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Howell District - Match 56 @ 1:20 ish:

http://youtu.be/rXeaA72u3x8?t=1m20s

-Clinton-

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Excellent writeup Jim. As someone who came into FIRST in 2002, I agreed with your analysis of each game.

I really can't understand the single ball rule this year. I think it the biggest downfall of the game and is the seed that encourages all of the negative gameplay we have seen thus far including the impact of massive penalties. What did GDC think the other four robots were going to do when they weren't in possession of the ball? Sit down together with a bowl of popcorn while they watched their respective balls get scored?

IMO the game would have been much more fun and exciting with a maximum of three balls per alliance on the field at a time. Each robot would have its very own ball to play with and they would all be happy. Instead we end up with "Ball? I don't have a ball- well this sucks... Oh look! That one has a ball! I'll go and hit him then..."

Furthermore, with three balls in play alliances would be able to score many more points and the fouls would have less impact on match outcomes. Robots who were incapable of scoring the ball could still contribute equally as an assister/feeder for scoring robots.

GDC - You screwed up. That's okay though, we all do it, but please take action to make this right. Failure to do so will foster far more resentment toward this game than admitting a mistake was made and fixing it. Please reduce the severity of the penalties or give the other robots a ball to play with.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I will preface this with I do not like this game, but I think you are wrong. If this game were to play how the GDC thought it was going to play out, all 6 robots wouldn't have to move and the cycle times would be fast and no defense would really be played.

Inbound(red or blue zone) > truss toss > catch(white zone) > pass to 3rd robot in(red or blue zone) > score in top goal

Robot wouldn't have to move and you could have <10 sec cycle time and at 60 points a cycle that puts the 50 point tech foul well balanced.

However they should have known that the game was NEVER going to play like that and adjusted the game accordingly during the design and rule making process.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I hope that something comes from your paper. Great job!!!!

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Let's talk about soccer.
I know we played it in 2010, but I think there are a lot of parallels to the current game.
There are essentially TWENTY players who are actively trying to get posession of a single ball - or prevent others from doing so. There are debilitating and, to the untrained observer, confusing and contradictory penalties. The game is simple to explain, but very difficult to master. There are no shortage of silly and archaic rules (what do you mean, we're not allowed to pick up a ball?) yet it is the single most popular game in the world.
Because the game strategies have evolved and matured.
Because the players decided that there are efficient and elegant ways to beat the physical gameplay, and have implemented them successfully.

The rules are full of little blue boxes that essentially say, "Hey, teams, if you do these things, you'll be penalized. Try not to do them." We all get the same set of rules at the same time*. The onus is on the teams to avoid these penalties, not on the GDC for creating them.

*Yes, I realize there are game updates and Q&A rulings. But these are public, and all teams are playing under the same rules at a given time/location.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Where was the 'abstain' slot for those who have read it but do not have enough information one way or the other? What's the % error based upon your sample size? That pole is weak an inconclusive as-is.

The paper is interesting Jim, but I got the feeling that the last (and most important) page is just another rant for someone who is able to get on a loud soap box. Where are your actual suggestions? From everything else I've read that you put out, you're way smarter and more grounded than that.

Short term:
Decrease penalty points?
Add a safety zone?
Add a 2nd ball per alliance?
Increase value of assists?
Add a mid-tier penalty for mostly-inconsequential things? (After seeing 40's dirty plays in '08 Galileo elims, I believe intentionally possessing the other ball and/or tipping another robot should remain a big deal)

Long term:
Limit tractive drive train peak power to 1300W or speed to X ft/s?
Add a safety zone to every FRC game?
No more open fields?
Require full bumpers?
Remove the irrelevant autonomous rules?

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I will preface this by saying this game has really grown on me. I found the matches at Crossroads by and large to be very exciting. I think Taylor's parallel to soccer is apt. I don't think the GDC was anticipating no defense. I think they said at kickoff and in the rules that we should expect vigorous game play. I have only been to one regional, but have watched (online) over a hundred other matches watching the teams of friends and 1014 alums compete. The parents and teachers who have been to a competition and/or watched online almost all have said they understand the flow of the game more than in any previous year except 2012. What I see is a game that cannot be dominated by a good robot. I think this is a good thing. This is a game when three pretty good robots, some of which can't do everything, can legitimately be powerhouses as alliances.

That said, the penalties seem out of proportion to the final scores. But actually not by that much. Just a cursory examination of data from a few regional competitions for a few seasons (mostly Pittsburgh, Buckeye and Queen City, because those are the regional competitions we have attended and for which I have data) shows me that there have been other years where where many matches were "decided by penalties." The quotations marks are because it is probably not as simple as comparing final scores with penalty points. Because this year has been much better than years past with getting the penalty scores posted during the match there are many fewer surprise reversals after a match is done. That alone has been a serious improvement. I remember many times in the past having a match end and then waiting for all the fouls to be tallied to see who won.

As Jim and others have pointed out, there are just too many 50 point technical fouls. I think that most of the contact inside the frame perimeter technical fouls could and should be just fouls. If you design a game where the robots pretty much have to expand outside their frame perimeters to gather balls you shouldn't call technical fouls when there is non-intentional contact. As for making it never advantageous to intentionally draw a foul, you can make all fouls deemed intentional technical fouls. Take the pinning rules. You could easily say that teams that don't back off in time get a foul. If they continue the pin for more than 3 or more than 5 more seconds, or through to the end of the match, it is a technical foul in addition.

As I have said in a couple of other threads, the other thing that would improve game play is having dedicated scorekeepers and let the other refs concentrate on fouls. But to do this they would really need to start at the beginning of the season so that each scorekeeper had a pad. Ideally one scorekeeper for each team could just watch for possessions and scores by that team. But you could probably get away this year with one scorekeeper watching each alliance.

I still think that with some easy to implement changes this could be one of my two favorite games, because the game play itself is so important.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

The difference is that a single robotics team doesn't build a "soccer team"; we build a "soccer player". In the qualifying matches, your alliance is random. If you get randomly partnered with robots that DON'T build robots around these rules, you can get really screwed.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Welcome to FIRST. :o

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

It's been a long time since I've played soccer, but I'm pretty sure it'd be less appealing if players not actively engaged with the ball could hope to legally remove each other from competition by charging/pushing/tackling with significant leeway. (Yes, we have G28, etc rules, but one can still hope to completely shut down a player's offense for the match using only legal defense play.) If 16/20 or so players on the field spent their time sparring, it'd be a very different game to say the least.

So, kudos, Jim. We've won events as the primary defender, but I knew a kickoff that this'd be too far. At least offer a viable alternative to playing D so much, particularly since the clearest target often isn't even on active offense themselves.

To Jesse's good point:
* Short term - I think we play the game we've been dealt. I don't see a reasonable fix that could be made this late, but I'm open to suggestions. Minor improvements, but nothing that can change the rational cost-benefit on the amount of time and effort some teams spend trying to disable others. Better scoring/reffing, fouls, field management, etc is something that needed to have been handled from the start (speaking with my ref hat on), though there are some fixes occurring. So, we play. I've got 2+ more ref gigs and 1+ more coaching events, and I'll play the hand I'm dealt.
* Long term - Don't design games that deliberately limit the amount of time per match a team can spend play offense. I genuinely cannot understand how this was considered a good idea. Talk to the head ref advisers earlier. Get advisers that have actually built teams and robots and coached matches. I don't think it's a coincidence that the VRC GDC seems to avoid a lot of these complaints.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Lol This is a great read! Thank you Jim for putting this together. I am glad we are on the same page on this game, and most of the past games. :)

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

So don't complain about them - educate them as to the proper way to play the game. They all passed inspection, so they're not incurring penalties just by being on the field.
These teams you've been assigned - they are not "random robots" - they're your ALLIANCE PARTNERS. In every sense of the words. Treat them as such.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I like this game, as a spectator and a coach, though I agree that the penalties are a bit over-the-top. I do, on the other hand, think they're largely avoidable through prudent design and prudent game play.

On a side note, I saw several instances this past weekend where a human player tossed a ball toward/into an opponent's robot, in what seemed to be a clear attempt to force a technical foul. While I'd hope this would be called as a G14 if it ever happened, with the amount of things the refs have to watch, I'm not sure it would be.

Tricksy tricksy.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

As a newcomer to FIRST in 2011, I've only experienced very good games until this year. In 2011, 2012 and 2013 the strong offensive robots typically won, and teams were inspired to build offensive robots. This year, however, the cards are stacked towards a defensive bot. What's the fun in working hard and building a strong, reliable scoring robot when a box on wheels can draw tech fouls faster than you can pick up the game piece? I feel STRONGLY that this game missed the mark. I hope that either the game is fixed or next year is once again fun to watch and participate in, because if this trend continues I don't know if I want to keep giving it so much of my time and energy.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Jim, nice write up recapping the penalty situation over the years. I agree that there is correlation between games that seem qualitatively "good" and emphasize defensive penalty risk. The past 3 years have been some of the best games to watch. Take the co-op bridge out of 2012 and I think you have the ideal mix of "fun to play" and "spectator friendly".

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I'm a fan of the paper.

Being the GDC is not an easy job, anything can happen. Lunacy happened ::rtm::

Like every year, there are issues with this game, but most importantly I think what the GDC did (quite excellently) is create a game that evolves dramatically with a variety of strategies. This year more than ever, the strategy on the field is not always "Shut Down XXYY, and we might win the match." Yes, every game has an optimal strategy, just like in basketball, but this year has a certain amount of the “underdog alliance could legitimately pull off an upset with this strategy” that I absolutely love it.

I think loosening of the defensive rules was a byproduct of that, allowing for more strategies. Could there be some room for improvement on the rules? Yes. Does the GDC try to influence how they want the games played through the rules? I'll let you decide that.

Should there be a safe zone? Would that not lead to checkmate type strategies? Likely. Is the human player involvement in this game unpolished? That is debatable, I think with a wall or something to limit how a human could enter the ball into play would take away one of the most unique opportunities this year - passing to a human.

But honestly, I've been around FRC for long enough to really appreciate and love the nuances that GDC gives to every year's game and this year, the element of unpredictability in the strategies is my favorite.
This game will continue to get better as teams learn to leverage that ability to their advantage.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I hope they allow drive trains with more than 1300w of power! Ours is 2.4 kW!!
But most of those long terms are things teams need to design for.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

It was called at Southfield in Week 1. The HP threw the ball into the wrong robot. Most likely it was a mistake, but it was a deliberate action that would have resulted in the other team getting a foul if there was no G14 rule. Then the HP realized what he had done, and reached into the field to try to grab the ball back - 2nd technical.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Ouch.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I couldn't agree more. One thing that I've seen in recent years is that many teams no longer build a "robust" robot that's designed to handle the intensity of the game. The robots we all used to build prior to 2007 (the first year bumpers were mandated) make some of the chassis I see these days look like they're made out of tin foil.
Personally I think teams that decide to take extreme weight-reducing measures by compromising the durability of their bots should do so at their own peril.

I do think that offense should be deregulated more (getting a penalty called because a defending robot gets itself in the way of your collector is absurd), but I don't think you necessarily need to super regulate defense (like in 2008) to accomplish a balanced game. I still think 2006 was one of the best, most balanced games to date, and it included an open field, lots of game pieces, good defensive robots, good offensive robots, and few bumpers.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Emphasis mine.

That's the big key here, by having multiple ways to score it cuts the defense across a couple different people. In 2006 there were potentially 3 scoring robots and only 2 defending robots except potentially in the last period of play. Compare that with this year where exactly one robot is capable of scoring points for their alliance. This leaves 2 defenders on one robot by virtue of having nothing better to do.

I think the core problems with this years game stem from the lack of alternate ways to help your alliance. There are exactly two ways your robot can provide benefit to your alliance: 1) Manipulation of the ball. 2) Inhibit the opponent from manipulating their ball. Being as only one robot can do #1 the other 2 need to do SOMETHING.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I don't think you fully understand the role velocity plays in hit energy. Yeah, pre-2007 some of the more thuggish teams built tanks and bashed opponents "back in the good old days", but most teams trying to play the games drove around and got beat on quite a bit. Frames have IMO actually gotten better. the KOP frame has a lot better durability to it than the KOP frames from 2004 onward. In fact, I would say it is nearly equivalent to some of the best from the 2007/2008 timeframe.

Deformation comes from energy. and Kinetic energy is KE=1/2*m*V^2. In 2007, most defenders only traveled at about 7 FPS or less. Now, may are hitting 10 FPS with some teams exceeding 12 or 14 fps even. When comparing the two, a 7 FPS robot has 1/2 the kinetic energy of a 10 FPS robot. 12 FPS robot is at 3X a 7 FPS robot. 14 FPS is at 4X the Kinetic energy.

I help kep a lot of teams running during the weekends, and this year, I am seeing a lot of fallout due to wires getting pulled out during high speed impacts. Its a rough game.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

This is a great paper. I couldn't agree with you more. As someone who has been part of the FIRST community since I started competing in 2002, it was a lot of fun to read this and travel back through memories.

A lot has already been said on this thread regarding this, but I do hope they drop the impact of unavoidable and non-malicious actions throughout the game. I also wish they would stop writing rules that use the word "intentional" since it's so subjective. Until then, we'll keep doing our best to have fun and avoid penalties :)

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I don't remember 2000 as being a rough year, 1999 was much worse. However, watching the following video from 2000 15 years later and two things jump out. Robots were really slow and even normal play was really rough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FJFbvHRyco

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

For the most part, I agree with the frame comment. The 1x2 aluminum box frames that are popping up all over the place these days are pretty tough. The ball intakes this year aren't that tough.

I also agree with the speed comment. Now that teams with an average budget can just purchase a frame with a three CIM two speed transmission, there's a ton of teams with wicked fast robots.

As for past robots being slow, I don't think you could call 111's 2003 auto slow. Full speed collisions in auto could be dangerous that year, especially with teams using CIMs and drill motors together. I remember being amazed that a team (??) built a robot that went 14 fps, which isn't that far off from some teams this year.

http://youtu.be/vnwl31zoAPI?t=1m4s

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I was actually not speaking of the KOP frame, and you're right that it's considerably better than previous years (though I still thought the older ones were fairly durable if assembled right). I just remember when we used to build our robot frames out of ~0.25" aluminum plates because there were no bumpers (granted, this could have just been our team, but we never had a bent frame).

I will admit my experience is limited to 2005 and later, but still, I don't remember seeing nearly as many of THESE problems back in 2006 and 2007, and as I recall there were some pretty speedy robots in those games, maybe they didn't all have 6 motor drives (though ours did in 2006), but there were definitely robots that could get across the field very quickly.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I'll say this write up is a factual summary of rules, but strongly disagree with the bias that FIRST does a poor job of rules and penalties.

I missed the "no penalties" era by a year. I started in 2004 with "Raising the Bar" and in our team's very first match we were complete, moronic, rookies with two Bosch drill motors for our drive system, and a floppy scissors lift with floppy appendages that crossed the plane of the goal so many times that we caused our exceptionally talented partners, team 33, to lose the match.

I'll give team 33 some GP credit for taking that one on the chin, but here's the thing: we analyzed what we did wrong... which started back with not actually considering all the rules when we built our robot, and set forth to take responsibility to never have a match deciding penalty called against us, ever again.

It almost worked... I think we did get one a couple years later.

When the rules were announced, we would read the rules and design a robot that could play the game within the rules. We would also plan a strategy to play the game within the rules. We would quiz the drive team on the rules and emphasize the goal to play a clean game.

I know we didn't quite meet our goal of having a perfect record of rule compliance, and I can remember more than one time when I privately disagreed with a referee's call, but never... ever... in all the games that Jim references have I felt that I could have done a better job of writing the rules or making the calls.

Nope, the rules aren't perfect. The refs aren't perfect. But they are a heck of a lot better than I could do, and as part of buying in to FRC, I'm buying in to the rule book, too.

Perhaps my approach comes from playing a variety of sports. Basketball, hockey... none of them have perfect rule books or perfect refs. Just ask the American women's ice hockey team. Or the Canadian women's soccer team. (Do those two, match-deciding, calls in Olympic finals and semi-finals balance each other out?) Compared to other sports FRC is pretty darn good. If you think explaining an FRC game is complex, try explaining football or baseball to someone who has never seen the game before.

So I completely reject the thesis that the rules are "bad". The GDC is made up of some pretty brilliant people who do a fantastic job of coming up with a creative game each and every year. While it is easy to complain about aspects of the game, I'd have to be pretty arrogant to suggest that I could do better... and I'd be the cliche of the armchair quarterback to suggest that I could do a better job of enforcing the rules than the refs do!

Okay... maybe this turned into a bit of a rant. Everyone is welcome to have their opinion on the rules, the refs, and is more than welcome to suggest improvements. And I have no problem with people having "favorite" games, or suggesting that they enjoyed one game more than another (Aim High was my favorite). I'll even agree with the fact that there are many match-deciding penalties. But that happens in sports. Really. It does... and that's okay.

But please take into account that each year, the GDC has to come up with a rule book that will spend the next three months being picked apart by 40,000 of the brightest, most creative minds on the planet. I think they do an outstanding job of it.

Jason

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Jason, I just had a similar rant with my team. Rant on, Brother. Rant on.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Well put Jason and thanks for sticking around and helping with the tear down in Mt Vernon as well as being a Judge.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I think you hit it right on the nail. No one individual person or group can make a well-balanced and well-received game/scoring/penalty system when you are dealing 40000 bright participants. It's simply impossible to do this year-after-year, in a sustainable fashion.

What if we turn the problem itself around into a solution? Leverage the 40000 brightest minds to help with fine tuning v1 of the game, solicit inputs in different stages in a structured way, and engage them to assist?

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

3) Protect their alliance's scoring robot from defense.
I haven't seen much counter-defense played at the events I've watched, but there were times when an "inbounder" or "midfielder" robot were sitting there doing nothing while their scoring robot was getting hammered by defense. In situations like these, a bit of counter-defense could allow the scoring robot to finish the cycle and keep the game moving, where they would otherwise be blocked or keep missing shots due to defense.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I would postulate that back in the days before bumpers gameplay was far more violent. Today we may experience batteries sliding around and wires pulling out during impact but back then a hard hit could completely destroy a robot's frame. I remember one team with a beautifully engineered and constructed robot made of laminated maple. It was a piece of art. One hit by a fast moving machine though and it was reduced to splinters.

I don't agree with the idea that robots have increased in power. Back then you had Bosch drill motors which in themselves were up around the 500W range, CIM @ 300W, FP-0673 @ 290W, combine two or more and you are easily keeping pace with the drivetrain power of today. What has changed however are that FIRST has done away with the impossibly difficult to mount/use drill motors and given us more CIMS. With the availability of products from vendors like AM and VEX, combining three motors in a 2 speed gearbox which was once considered the holy grail of drivetrains is now within everyone's reach.

Furthermore, I distinctly remember when the "kit frame" included 80-20 Bosch extrusion and 2x4x0.125" aluminum box tubing. If anything the kit frames from today are far more flimsy than in the past. This is okay though - the inclusion of bumpers has facilitated this.

I have no problem with the speed and power of today's machines. It's thrilling to see a robot zip from one end of the field to another, deeking their opponents out and pirouetting around them at 18fps. Just don't get in it's way! Don't complain that a robot "hurt" yours when you got in their way and that it's their fault your machine is now broken. The robot who ran into you experienced just as much energy transfer and impact as yours did. Build em strong!

I truly believe the key to mitigating defensive strategies and violence on the field is all in how the game is constructed. Like preventing war between countries, the key to a peaceful civilization is that it has to be unprofitable for parties to fight. The answer here is not through the increased use of penalties. Give every robot a ball to play with and a constructive job to do aside from messing with their opponents and they'll all play nice.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Jason, very nice rant. Joseph I think you hit the nail on the head. So many times I have seen teams not helping their allies get free to shoot. This requires some coordination. After watching a lot of game film, we have come to the conclusion that sometimes the most effective "blocking" is to get the blocking robot to lead the way and get between the defender and the ally with the ball.

This year I have felt what I see as two distinct kinds of frustration over the game. The first is that penalties are too big (and often because the refs are toggling between pad screens too inconsistently called) so that penalties incurred by accident are changing too many matches. I completely understand that frustration. The second is the "We built a really great robot that can score well and this 'box on wheels' just keeps running into us." While I understand that frustration, I think it might well have been intended by the GDC.

Probably more than any other FRC game I have experienced, in Aerial Assist good driving and good strategy trumps a good robot. I really liked the games the last two years, but they were both games in which one really good robot could dominate most alliances. I was describing this year's game to a friend and he said "From what you said it sounds like it is how well you act without the ball that determines whether your alliance wins."

In one of our better matches, we were partnered with 4269. They were acting as the middle robot, picking up from 4306, heading to the white zone and passing to us. When a defender was near us they would give us the ball and then drive the defenders away from the side of the field giving us a clear lane to score. We got three 40 point cycles (after having to spend some time clearing autonomous balls) fairly easily this way. That match made me focus more on thinking about what the robot should be doing when it doesn't have the ball.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

+1 Great paper.

Hard Hits:
This field is very open so both you and whoever you run into are that much more likely to be at your top speed. Personally I'm fine with 6CIM's total being allowed, I feel it gives greater flexibility and increases robot diversity. However if you are concerned with collision speed you would need to limit max fps maybe to 10-12 or so or increase bumper thickness? I really don't know how I feel about that.

Foul Values:
Contact inside the frame perimeter, goal, whatever needs to be conditional. Why can you get a penalty for doing something that doesn't affect game play or safety? Emphasis on dose not affect. The 50pt for pinning may be changed to the current point value of a ball possessed by that robot or 20p if it possesses no ball.

Ball position and does G14 even exist?:
Possession of an opponent's ball rule and the wording of G14 means as long as you can't prove they tried to put the ball in your robot you get the foul no matter how it happened. You could loose coms because your DS crashed and an opposing alliance bot could push the ball into your robot and it would be completely legal so long as they say it was accidental. My test for a fare foul is can you literally do nothing (assuming that doing nothing does not incur a foul by it self like a G25 for example) and get a foul. G14 needs to say that you cannot intentionally or Unintentionally cause another alliance to incur a foul with 20p and 50p for Unintentionally and intentionally respectively. Just see the video in post #46 top of page 4.

Summery:
I think this is a good game with a misguided focus on how and what for foul points are applied and an all too weak G14. Also a lack of any protection for offence bots just makes more defense and interference play which means more broken bots.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I think it's incumbent that the more experienced teams train the less experienced teams. In both our regionals, the penalties fell significantly over the 2 days because as teams played with our drive coach, he trained their human players on what to do. By the end of quals, almost all of the teams had been through his mill. In elims, there were very few penalties. Over 6 matches, we only had 2 technical fouls added to our score, and one was when a robot was tipped over by a hard hit--a tech foul in any year. And we only had one tech foul against us for a herding call. (I also have a problem with the disparate definition of "possession" for offense vs defense.)

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I agree with this paper and have a couple of things to add.

Number one complaint is that I don't even understand why you are all talking about this.... everybody who has been in FIRST remembers that they eliminated penalties in a big Kickoff webcast presentation. Dean said there will be no more penalties....
For those of you who don't remember what I am referring to, At kickoff in 2012?maybe...(Help an old man's memory out someone, all the years blur together). they came out and announced, no more penalties! Cheering and excultation commenced, till we read the rules and figured out that all they had done was changed penalty to foul.... and the end result was FIRST reconized that penalties were killing the game and then proceeded to fix the problem by smoke, mirrors, and completely ignoring the problem existed.

Honestly I may be a but more jaded, but just eliminate penalties for anything other then destroying (intentionally) another robot. Let the robots play the game, it will be a LOT simpler and more fun to watch. If you need fouls to keep a game fair, you are doing it wrong.

Oh and bumpers are silly, build a frame for contact, if it breaks, you did not build it strong enough. I was opposed to them when they first came out and I have never grown fond of them, especially since they are a pain to make. Frankly, I miss the nice crunch sounds from before bumpers. (I've been doing this since 2000)
Jim

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I agree with the need to build a strong frame. But I haven't been able to convince the school board to build hallway walls strong enough to handle robot impacts. Bumpers to me have always been about protecting the world from the robot, rather than the robot from the world. (They also do a great job of eliminating "wedge-bots".)

But if you really like the sound of crunching metal, here's a great off-season event to get away from all those silly penalties and bumpers! http://www.botsiq.org/manage.aboutbbiq.php

Jason

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Jim does a nice job of summarizing FRC history and I appreciate the perspective of someone who has seen the really early years of FIRST as a comparison. I started in FRC in 2004 so I wasn't aware that penalties hadn't really existed before (I knew alliances were fairly new). Overall I agree that penalties aren't an effective way of policing team behaviors, and penalties have to be possible and sensible to enforce.

I also got this reading the paper. Although the amount of rough gameplay has gotten out of hand this season, I am glad to see a game without safe zones. I find offensive robots that are untouchable while scoring, loading, and driving across certain portions of the field to be a tad boring to watch at times. I really liked 2013 but wasn't a big fan of 2011, and 2012 was hit or miss depending on the matches. I know the paper is about the penalty system but it's a very different perspective on some of the rule additions of the last few years.

In both this thread and the other penalty paper thread I have seen numerous comments that the major failing of this game is a single game piece, which gives teams without a ball nothing to do other than pound on each other. I concede that this is not a good thing, but I can also see why the GDC attempted it besides forcing cooperation, which is that it makes the match flow much easier to watch from a spectator perspective. If you discount the confusing "what is an assist?" rules (unique robots... in unique zones... huh?) this is one of the easiest games to watch as a spectator ever. In autonomous teams simply try to score the ball in the goal, and the rest of the match you never have to watch more than 2 game pieces at a time. No end game maneuvers, no doubler balls, no bonuses for owning goals. If the whole assist system had been tossed out I still think a decent amount of passing between teams would have occurred simply because this is the most effective way to move the ball down field under defense.

I've heard complaints since I joined in 2004 that FRC games are difficult to follow because there are too many game pieces at once and too many ways to score for an easy explanation. How do you resolve that issue with the conflicting problem of teams having nothing to do but wale on each other?

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I've only heard scouters say this. The non-FIRST spectators like to see, at least from my experience, controlled chaos. A great example of this was 2006. Impossible to scout every ball scored, but the spectators loved it.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I did a completely non-representative sample of all of our parents who went to our competition and have been to at least one other. All of them felt that this game was good to watch (not all said it was their favorite) and all felt that this game was easier to understand than any previous game they had seen.

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

Bumpers have always been about protecting the field from the robots. With the increase in power fields were getting pretty beat up. Still do to an extent (see 125 running our intake underneath the diamond plate at RI after a hit)

Re: paper: Spanking the Children
 

I was only 8 at the time but ill try to explain it.

The 2004 game was called FIRST frenzy: raising the bar. the name came from a 12 foot high "chin up" bar placed at the center of the field.

A way to get a large amount of points was to simply hanag from the bar however, because both alliances hung from the same bar there was bound to be midair colissions. This was sometimes awsome as I remember seeing a robot climb over the top of another robot to get there hang points but more commonly it was a slam fest to be the first one hanging. In the case of wildstang because they hung rather high teams would wack them with there apendages and not draw any penalties resulting in the "Wialdstang Pinata".