Thread: <G28>
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Unread 10-01-2012, 15:43
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Chris Hibner Chris Hibner is offline
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Re: <G28>

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik View Post
I know the GDC has made some calls in the past that many of us disagreed with or thought would go the other way, but this one just seems far far too obvious to support this speculation. I'm honestly expecting a Q&A on this to get a rather abrupt smackdown requesting the submitter not lawyer the rules and use some common sense.
(EDIT: I think my initial stance on this wasn't so clear, so I made a few edits.)

I don't think it's that obvious that the rule should be clarified as you suggest. Below are two scenarios in which violating G28 can win you a match if the rule is clarifed as suggested. In other words, the following two scenarios illustrate that a team that knows that G45 provides protection against multiple G28 infraction causes that team to violate G28 in order to win the match:

In each scenario you have one great robot (robot A) that can pick up balls and score with ease, and another robot that can't pick up balls, can't shoot, but is as large as a refrigerator (robot Z).

Scenario 1:
Robot Z's alliance has three balls in front of Robot A's rebounder station with 40 seconds to go. Robot Z knows Robot A can pick up the balls and score them with ease resulting in losing the match, so Robot Z herds the balls into the corner of the field in the lane and parks their robot so Robot A can't get them.

Robot A tries to shove Robot Z out of the lane in order to get to the balls, which earns Robot A three points for the foul (Robot Z is in violation of G28, so Robot A gets 3 points). Robot Z continues to sit there knowing that Robot A can't get to the balls and they can't continue to touch Robot Z for fear of violating G45 (or even if they don't violate G45, perhaps the refs only award one foul). Robot Z's alliance wins since the 3 point foul is less than the 9 points Robot A would have scored. Violating rule G28 resulted in an advantage to Robot Z.


Scenario 2:
Robot A makes 100% of it's shots from a particular position of the key and is not so good elsewhere in the key (they have a fixed shooter that is highly optimized for one spot). Robot Z knows this and anchors itself to the part of the key that Robot A likes to shoot from. Robot A tries to shove Robot Z out of the way (giving Robot A 3 points for the foul) but can never move Robot Z out of the way since they are an immovable object. Robot A settles for the shot from the side of the key and misses all three shots (it only shoots well from where Robot Z is sitting). Robot Z's alliance wins since the 3 point foul is less than the 9 points it would have given up had Robot A had it's ideal scoring spot. Robot Z gained an advantage by violating G28.


In these two scenarios, do we really want to reward breaking a rule since breaking that rule costs less than if they played by the rules? As far as I'm concerned, in both cases Robot A should be awarded for at least the number of points they had to give up due to Robot Z's violations of G28. If that means awarding Robot A 3 points every time they back up and hit them again to try and move them out of the way, then so be it. The problem is that if the rule is changed, it's easy to violate G28 and get a 6 point advantage by doing so.
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Last edited by Chris Hibner : 10-01-2012 at 18:23.