Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

Both litter and frisbees require significantly more finesse than physical ability to throw effectively.
I see no difference between male or female human players at either task.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

I'm pretty sure the weakest person on our team(which is pretty weak btw) could throw the litter the length of the field. As stated above, it's a lot more about finess and technique than power. In fact too much power usually has bad results. I would argue that height is more of an advantage than anything else. Short people can do it yes but will take more practice and effort on average than a tall person probably.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

That maybe true. But from the matches I've watched, I haven't seen a girl player in that role. I wonder if what you said is also FIRST's rationale.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

I suspect the point is less "girls can't throw" and more "girls tend to be shorter". There is a common argument for taller being better when throwing over the alliance wall. Anecdotally this past weekend (at Horsham), this observation appeared to have some merit for noodles. That said, I'm not arguing to change the practice(s) at all. Heck, my Einstein HP in 2013 was like 5'4"? (I don't know how tall he is, but he's not tall.) Granted, 2015 is a lot closer to 2009 than 2013 in this regard. As for not seeing girls as HPs; given our ratio on most Drive Teams and teams in general, it's not so surprising regardless of the HP task.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

With a sister who regularly throws for her track and field events and is hoping to be the human player... no, I don't see it as a disadvantage at all ;)

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

OK, good point, I was thinking in terms of the ref pads rather than in terms of explaining it to the stands.

If the Containers were 2 pts/level instead of 4, the Northern Lights top 12 qualifying averages would have been:

Rank - Team - Qual Avg - New Rank - New Qual - Delta

1 3130 95.66 1 77.66 -18.00
2 525 92.22 2 70.66 -21.56
3 5172 77.66 4 65.22 -12.44
4 4623 75.22 3 65.22 -10.00
5 4859 63.22 5 63.22 -7.33
6 4624 68.55 7 60.33 -8.22
7 2512 67.55 6 61.55 -6.00
8 5638 67.11 8 59.11 -8.00
9 27 64.33 9 53.44 -10.89
10 2501 62.77 10 53.21 -9.56
11 876 60.44 12 49.55 -10.89
12 5232 59.88 11 50.77 -9.11


That change wouldn't affect the order of the standings much, but it would make them much tighter. Which I think would be a good thing as it makes the gap between the number 1 seed and the number 3 seed more surmountable.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

525's human player was so short that he had to jump to make 6-tote stacks behind the wall, but he was one of the best throwers I have seen. I don't think hardly any HPs in FRC are at the point where physical limitations are the reason why they can't throw well, I think insufficient practice is almost exclusively the limiting factor.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

As long as all teams can score both noodle and co-op points, the field stays leveled, especially with the average-score system this year. I agree co-op is worth too much, but it just makes the little guys closer to the top teams this year. Scouts are going to need to be good.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

Except that at Inland Empire, one of the best HPs in the game for throwing was also one of the shortest. I strongly suspect (opinion, nothing to back it up) that one of the reasons his team was picked was his ability to rack up the 4s, match after match after match.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

While the whole "humans scoring points in a robotics competition" is a debate worthy of its own thread (which I'm sure already exists circa 2009), the co-op points are a completely different matter.

You mention that lowering the co-op points currently "shake up the rankings" and lowering them would "balance out the rankings". My confusion comes from how something that was in the game from day one of build season could somehow cause a game to have rankings that were not as they were intended to be. FIRST intended to have working with the other alliance during the Quals be a sizable chunk of ranking well for the Playoffs, otherwise they wouldn't have made a stack of six with a can and a noodle worth nearly the same amount as possibly just putting a single tote on the step.

Whether or not a team chose to design for this is simply a matter of priorities. Do you want to possibly place more emphasis on ranking well or playing well in the playoffs? It's probably not that hard to choose both, but regardless, the co-op was something that simply just had to be considered from the get-go, just like the bridge in 2012.

It's always been there. Removing it would just hurt the teams who recognized it from the beginning in their strategic game analysis, which is probably something most teams should strive to do.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

Indeed, the funny thing 3476's human player trained a fair number of the best human players at IE, even though he never has time to throw litter himself because of all the tote loading he has to do. 3250's human player was nervous cause she never thrown litter in competition but we never doubted her. she practiced with our human player in the hallways between the matches, and she is really good at it.

No one on our alliance at IE liked the litter throwing, but once the throws started going, we felt compelled to throw too to keep up with the pace of scores. I think canning litter was much harder (3250 was good at that too). I kinda wish the game got stopped throwing until the last 20 seconds. You don't need more than 20 seconds to empty the litter bin.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

Yeah, I think this would be the least disruptive and least controversial way to address the "noodle minefield" situation.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

Totally agree. Changing it from "up to 20 seconds" to "only till 20 seconds" would immensely improve gameplay.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

I think you mean "after" instead of "till".

This would also add some much needed drama to the endgame.

Re: Nerf Co-op and Litter
 

So you're taking any noodle manipulators that exist and making them essentially useless, how is that "non-disruptive"?