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Re: The Noodle Agreement
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Punishing teams for defending a valid and fair coopertition based strategy to artificially inflate your own poorer methods, and then rubbing this in their face by using their own better idea and then banning them from ANY possible degree of success in competition AT ALL (because yes, 40 points per match is that huge) is cruel and undeniably non gp. It'd be like making all teams agree last year to not give the game pieces to the good high goal scorers just so low goal bots can do better; it's not their fault your strategy is poorer, don't punish them over it. |
Re: The Noodle Agreement
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How about a modification of the noodle agreement: We each agree to dump 7 noodles (28 pts) and each alliance gets 3 to play with. Then you can use your noodles how you wish with your complicated mechanism you spent time during the season designing and we still both gain a large value. The marginal value between a noodle dump and a noodle in a bin is 2 pts. I think you could make a new stack (4 pts, opportunity for bin pts) faster than you could stick a noodle in a bin no matter when it happens (noodle in bin before stack, noodle in bin while already on the stack, etc...) The goal is to increase your QS during quals. Taking TNA will increase your score by 40, and also give you opportunity to spend time scoring more and increase it even further. Other than a doublecross, I challenge you to find me a time when it is not advantageous to take the noodle agreement. Another question for discussion: I suspect many people would say refusing to cooperate with the yellow totes would be against GP. At the same time, I've heard that coopertating with noodles is not GP. Both lead to 40 pts for both alliances. What is the difference between them? |
Re: The Noodle Agreement
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Shout out to The cold noodle war sounds like a harsh time in college... If you just made it so that it didn't bump the opposing side wouldn't it work roughly the same and have the same risk reward? |
Re: The Noodle Agreement
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Re: The Noodle Agreement
Personally, I think the agreement is detrimental to the game in three ways:
1) It allows for the potential to gang up on the strongest alliance in the semifinal if the other three cooperate with each other but not the strongest one, giving them a 40 point advantage. This is a much stronger threat than in the quarters, where the numbers 7 and 8 alliances are unlikely to give up 20 points (and 40 points probably isn't even enough to knock out the number 1 alliance anyway). 2) It trivializes an interesting part of the game. Scoring the noodles in the recycling containers is perhaps the hardest engineering challenge this game provides (with respect to mechanisms, I think some of the autonomous tasks may be harder regarding control systems), and is worth at most 60 points (you can get more, but it requires the other alliance to throw their noodles across the field, which won't happen with TNA). TNA provides 40 of those points without any challenge, making building a noodle-handling mechanism much less competitive than it would be otherwise. 3) It complicates an already confusing game when trying to explain it to non-FIRST spectators. Do we want to explain (to potential sponsors or other supporters) why teams are deliberately scoring for each other? How about why, though the theme of the game is recycling, teams are choosing instead to leave the LITTER on the ground? At low levels, points from TNA are likely to exceed points from actual robot actions. I'm not sure how the GDC envisioned this game, but I would be surprised if this was their intention. |
Re: The Noodle Agreement
I think that most teams will want to use the noodles for scoring in the recycling bins (or throwing if they are able to), because that gives them a more distinct advantage against other teams than TNA since it doesn't increase your opponent's score. TNA basically gives a short term strategic advantage before heralding a long-term hassle for everyone, and decreased game diversity (it removes an interesting element of the game). At that point it doesn't really do anything but make the game less fun and interesting for everyone, which really isn't in the spirit of FIRST.
At any particular regional (assuming the rules aren't changed to disallow TNA in the future) there will probably be a period staring from the beginning of qualifications in which no team will want to do the noodle agreement for fear of starting a "TNA ripple" through the entire competition. Nobody wants to be "that guy" or "that team," especially considering how much TNA goes against FIRST values and robotic design competition. |
Re: The Noodle Agreement
I seriously hope they fix this before competitions. The points are so big, especially for early levels of competition, that would be a great benefit for any team participating. And if you know about it, then all you can do is...play along, whether you like it or not.
If it isn't fixed, I fear 2015 will be forever known as the "the noodle agreement year", where competitions were decided by teams' performance in a prisoner's dilemma unrelated to the actual game. Jumping to worst case scenarios is premature though, there's still plenty of time to work this out. I must also add that although our team may play along with TNA if it comes to that, I could never abide conspiring to punish a team or teams for violating meta-rules we have created. That would just be wrong. |
Re: The Noodle Agreement
Deja vu...
Not many of us have been around long enough to remember, but 2003's Stack Attack had very close to the same kind of qualification scoring and the same argument. That year, instead of "don't pick up litter", it was "don't knock down stacks". The result was so much argument and ill will between teams that we thought they'd never do anything like that again. |
Re: The Noodle Agreement
I think there needs to be a compromise within this agreement. Do you think that teams will be willing to leave 5 noodles in the litter bin? This could allow teams to move the noodles into the landfill zone if the opposing alliances are dishonest. Also, do you think most teams will be throwing their noodles into the opposing alliance zone? Tell me your thoughts please
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Re: The Noodle Agreement
I have a feeling this may be used near the end of the qualification matches. In which teams need XXX points to rank higher.
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Re: The Noodle Agreement
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Forcing every team at an event into behaving according to whatever model you think is best is just asking for trouble, because there will be teams made to suffer under it through no fault of their own. I think noodle alliances will really have to be handled on a case by case basis. Alliances deserve to be able to advocate for what works best for them in each particular situation, not be silenced into following some artificial standard imposed on them by teams who feel threatened. Using the threat of effectively kicking a team out of competition because they have their own ideas is not cool. |
Re: The Noodle Agreement
They're going to solve this issue quite simply... Either by putting red or blue tape to denote what litter belongs to which alliance or by some other similar means.
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Re: The Noodle Agreement
Another potential "fix" using red and blue noodles is to have +4 for your noodles in the opposing alliance zone and -4 for your noodles in your own zone.
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Re: The Noodle Agreement
so on a somewhat related note would i be legal to pick up a recycling can and then take it to the human player and have him/her put it in the can?
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Re: The Noodle Agreement
To be realistic, nothing involving a large scale agreement between teams is going to happen. This includes any proposals for "compromise" or "treaties". The idea of all 40+ teams at a competition getting together and agreeing on a treaty, or anything, is ridiculous. If TNA stays legal, decisions about it will be made team by team, match by match. (Probably for the better...the idea that teams could get together and conspire to force teams to follow their rules, and punish those that break them, is chilling.)
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