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Unread 02-03-2014, 15:05
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Re: How can you help GDC make this game better?

<G28>
What we have here is nearly the identical situation we had in 2008:
- The GDC chose a very large playing object.
- Because the object is so large, it is essentially impossible to obtain the object without extending beyond the bumper zone.
- In order to play offense in Arial Assist, teams must have extensions in order to pickup and/or pass the ball.
- because there is only one playing piece per alliance, many teams are assigned to pure defense roles.
- What we saw at Southfield this weekend was defensive teams waiting until the offense reached out to collect the ball, and then hitting them in an attempt to draw a foul. Often this worked. Once a defense team successfully drew a penalty for this, either accidentally or purposefully, we observed them seemingly doing this more deliberately in later matches. Honestly, who can blame them?; if a team built a robot which cannot score, and they suddenly realize that they can quickly score 50 points by ramming others at the right moment, they will modify their game play to try to do this again.

- So, when it comes to rule enforcement on G28, the key question is this:
Should we penalize teams who are simply attempting to play the game as designed when defenders attack them as they attempt to collect the ball?

- Team A builds a complex machine which can collect and throw the ball as intended by the GDC.
- Team B builds a box with wheels.
- The <G28> rule as it stands puts all of the risk burden on Team A and none on Team B. Is this what we want? Continuing to enforce this rule as we saw in week 1 will discourage teams from rising to the challenge of the Arial Assist game design. I believe we should reward teams who try to solve the problems FIRST presents to us, not penalize them for trying.

Enforcing this rule with respect for offense and defensive roles will help.
Defense team do not have to crash into other teams' collectors. It is quite obvious that many of them are willfully engaging in these collisions.
Obviously this is a tough thing to police. Certainly, enforcing it only in situations where "damage" occurs will help as others have already suggested. My own team got one such penalty this weekend, and ironically it was our robot which was damaged, not the defender in that case.
Better defining exactly what constitutes damage will also help. The FRC manual states: FRC is a full-contact ROBOT competition and may include rigorous game play. While Game and ROBOT Rules limit severe damage to ROBOTS, Teams should design their ROBOTS to be robust.
To me this means that minor, incidental damage is to be somewhat expected. There does not seem to be universal agreement amongst the refs on what exactly damage is. If a team makes a fragile robot, who's fault is it when it breaks?

Eventually, most of the reffing staff got it right in 2008, so I think this can be done properly in 2014. The Southfield refs seemed to be already handling this better on Saturday IMHO.

In addition, this penalty is much, much too heavily valued. 50 points is simply way too much. In week one, the average per team contribution per match was 19 points. Having a situation in which a single infraction costs more that 2 matches worth of team contribution is a complete game killer. This penalty should only be 10 points.
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