Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

is there any video of the competition?? I am interested in a team that went to the competition!

thanks

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

True except for the fact that with a 2pt penalty a team may have been more willing to take a penalty to go back to get a ball or stop a team from setting a ball on the overpass at the end. I saw a few instances where a team wanted to get a ball that rolled into the previous zone and they thought better of going to get it due to the penalty.

I don't know if there is an easy answer here - just playing a little devil's advocate :D

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

Well, if they intentionally broke the rule to get a ball or stop a team from scoring, that would be the proper 10-point penalty. Like in football, where accidentally grabbing the facemask and immediately letting go is a 5-yard penalty, but intentionally grabbing the face mask and hanging on is a personal foul, 15-yard penalty.

Anyway, many veterans of these competitions have let me know privately that FIRST does not alter rules just because they work against the entire purpose of FIRST. The important thing, apparently, is not to try to improve the rules to make the game more exciting and playable, but to grimly discipline young people into cautiously driving around a track like grannies, fearing above all making a mistake.

My bad, carry on.

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

being from a rookie team that got well screwed over from both a ram that tipped an alliance mebers bot and a questionable plane breaking i think both should be swayed in the oppisite direction breaking the plane a little and getting a ten point penalty is just stupid and haveing one of your allaince's bots flipped and the other team gettign no penalty is just ridiculous but hey what are you gonna do besides give them hell in regional see you at Great Lakes

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

LOL I live with a techie and I've heard the "I've almost got it" so many times, I know to prepare not to see him for hours! Sometimes days.

Perhaps the solution here is to let wives write the official FIRST rule for how technical problems are to be handled during competition. My suggestion would be to set a 15 minute time limit for the technical gurus to fix the problem, then the field is cleared and a one hour break begins.

Kimberly

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

Wow, you must have gotten hit pretty hard by G22!

If you think about it, there aren't really any other ways to accomplish the GDC's task of making a game with circular movement. You could change G22 to say "robots may not cross the plane of the line" with no associated punishment, but what happens if a robot does it anyway and decides the match because of it? Do you take the win away? Do you ignore it? Ignoring it results in other teams doing it, and now you don't have your desired circular game. Taking the win away is a more severe version of what happens now. You could yellow card them and not penalize points-wise, but then you risk having teams fully DQed due to line-crossing, which is worse.

You could assign a lower point value, but once the penalty points are less than 8, the incentive is to cross the line and grab the ball because the hurdle you can get with it is worth more than the penalty you'll earn grabbing it.

The GDC wanted a game with circular motion and without massive physical defense as seen in 2006 and 2007. The only way to 'motivate' teams was to penalize those that did not go circularly.

Also, the purpose of FIRST is to expose young people to engineers and engineering. Technically, the purpose of FIRST is more the experience you had in the build season, not in the regional. Having a questionable rule (and there are always questionable rules, even in the workplace) doesn't subtract from its mission of increasing awareness of attractiveness of engineering careers.

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

Actually, no, not really. What I did see happen at times was a robot backing up to get around robots stopped in front of them, then getting a penalty because they were trying to keep moving rather than wait for the stopped robots to move. Our drivers eventually did learn to just wait rather than try to get around, but that's not the point. The point is that the rule seems to have some unintentional consequences, and should probably be changed, however, since this is a one-time event, what difference does it really make? I'll use all of it as a teaching moment. This one might involve teaching about rules that don't really do what they're intended to do and the futility of getting a bureaucracy to make changes that are in everybody's best interest. :D

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

I personally feel its not our place to question the rules but adapt to them because in life everything wont always go your way you just need to make adjustments to make the situation more fruitfull......when life hands you lemons make lemonade:)

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

Kimberly
What you are talking about was addressed in update #15. Your drivers should have known this information on Friday.

The rule has it intended consequence. Because some people think differently doesn't mean that it should be changed. Many people think the rule is just fine. Don't blame the bureaucracy.

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

I've thought about that, and I think the main problem is this: The only people that will ever get nailed by G22 were not intending to gain from breaking the rule. This is just a property of the rule's existence.

Why is this?
1) Accidents happen
2) The penalty value is high enough that it negates any potential gain from breaking it

Thus, nobody will ever break G22 trying to gain from it, and the only victims of G22 will be those who didn't intend to break it. This makes for quite the heartbreaker of a rule: threads full of people saying 'oh, it was only while we were turning' and 'I only ever saw people get hit by it when they were trying to turn and went over by accident'. This is, of course, because of the nature of the rule: nobody ever breaks it on purpose, because breaking it on purpose is literally pointless. I think if the point value was lowered it would become MORE controversial, because now the accidental victims would be lumped in with devious rule-breakers trying to gain a few more points. "#XXXX didn't even grab a trackball and got the same penalty as #YYYY who scored with one they STOLE from across the line :( :( :( " would be the refrain of the day.

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

In this game, point penalties are assigned based on actions, not on intent. We don't want refs basing their calls on assumptions about a team's intentions, do we?

Whoa, that's excessively harsh, and totally uncalled for. The stated purpose of FIRST is A rule designed to enforce counterclockwise travel around the track doesn't even come close to going against that purpose.

Something just occurred to me. It sounds like this Kettering event was run like a regional competition, but just the robot competition part. I think that might be putting undue emphasis on the outcome of the matches. There is so much more to FIRST in general, and even the First Robotics Competition in particular, than playing the game. I fully expect that MiGHT will find the Great Lakes Regional a much more inspiring environment, even with the same game rules in effect.

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

Update #15 specifically describes this scenario of impeding during a line cross and states that the impeding robot has 6 seconds to get out of the way before the impeded robot is allowed to cross the line to avoid the impeding robot.

On a general note (not related to quoted reply), I see a lot of pessimism, namecalling, and sarcasm in this thread that is frowned upon in FIRST because it's not in the spirit of gracious professionalism. Please everyone keep your keyboards civil no matter how much you feel that FIRST and the referees are out to get you.

Edit: There is another thread regarding whining about G22 here. It might be more constructive to move the conversation there.

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

I do understand having the 10 point penalty near the finish line, because it would prevent a robot from continuously going back and forth trying to remove the other team’s ball, but when a robot was trying to make a turn and had to back up because they misjudged the corner, they were then assessed more penalty points than they probably earned doing laps the entire match. That made absolutely no sense, especially if no other robot or a ball was near them at the time. I think the 10 point penalty should be changed to only apply to the finish line, and not to the lines near the corners, because it was very easy for teams to accidently back up over the line while trying to free their robot from a traffic jam, or while trying to re-navigate the turn. I believe one of the teams was assessed a 20 point penalty during autonomous mode for crossing back over lines! Like I said though, this is a one-time event, so rules that don't really fulfill their function isn't a big issue.

Also, in the final match, I think, the ref made a comment about “good defense” when one robot got between a ball and the other team's robot that was trying to pick it up, thus preventing the robot from capturing the ball. I thought that was not the spirit of the game and was surprised to learn it was considered a good thing, while backing up over the end lines, even if it didn’t impede scoring or another robot in any way, was a 10 point penalty.

As a general rule, I believe in questioning rules and being a catalyst for necessary change when change is possible. That's what makes a democracy better than other forms of government.

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

Kimberly,
Try to look at this from all possibilities and remember that it is unfair for refs to have to try to judge "intent" of a robot - they can only judge what the robot does or does not do.

Consider this: Lets say that two alliances play to a tie score. The red alliance drives all of their loops without ever crossing back over any lines. The blue alliance crosses over a line or two (accidentally or not - we can't judge the "intent" of the driver while watching the match, we can only guess what it was). I would argue that the red alliance in this case deserves the win as they were able to follow the rules as given (fair or not)

Keep in mind that the rules aren't created to hurt any teams/alliances. They are challenges that need to be overcome. Rather than get upset about the rule, the better route may be to plan how you can avoid the penalty in future matches.

Re: Rookie Team impressions from Kettering
 

There was a reduced set of awards given out for things like robot design, spirit, imagery, etc. Obviously no Chairmans, nor no Engineering Inspiration. There was a panel of distinguished judges, I believe 6 of them, who must have had quite a job of it interviewing 23 teams for consideration of 8 or 10 awards.

However, I did notice a bit of the attitude you suggest - the robot was considered the most important thing by many of the teams. As an example, I had to try to gently convince an alliance that they not cheer when penalties were announced for their opponents. "But that means we just won." Yes, I know it did, but wait for your cheers until the score is announced.

Most likely none of these teams were any different than rookie teams you will find anywhere else this season. But since in most other regionals the rookies will be in a minority, and at all regionals they will have veteran teams to learn from, did make the tone of the Kettering event slightly different than what will be found at the Regionals.