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Unread 10-03-2014, 02:37
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PayneTrain PayneTrain is offline
Trickle-Down CMP Allocation
AKA: Lizard King
FRC #0422 (The Meme Tech Pneumatic Devices)
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Re: Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better

The foul points are not the problem, were not the problem, and will never be the problem. The problems are the same you run into every year, but more obvious than before by more people.

-Teams are not adequately prepared for game elements that have remained unchanged since day 1 of build season. This is an open field game with two total scoring objects. Anyone who has bothered to understand FRC or any other game could have pointed out the potential for heavy defense that may be hard to judge. You had 6 weeks to design for it. The "battle scars" happen every year, but a few people seem to have decided that this year it is easy to blame the game for being different from recent affairs than to blame inadequate preparation. When 422 broke our drivetrain, we went back and said "how can we redesign this so it is more robust?" We didn't ask "how many petitions do we have to start on Chief Delphi to change the game to suit us?" You had practice day at your events to work with your human player under the new rule. Whether or not the "safety zone" ruling is ideal or not, there is a way the human player can function in his/her box and have zero to no fouls ever occur. I made it a point to make sure the human player on our team never fouled. We worked with other alliance partners who had some real all star human players to refine the technique we used. if you wanted more clarification, you had the driver meeting, practice day, and the question box to voice concerns and ask questions about G40. There were as many teams at Alamo that never committed a foul on G40 as there were that committed multiple violations of it. Everybody gets the same manual. Everybody has access to the same team updates. Read them. Know them. Love them.

-Teams are not adequately prepared for alliance partners to have no idea what they are doing. This is a problem that is made much more significant by the way the game is played this year. Great teams and good teams will lose matches because their alliance partners will misrepresent, underperform, be ignorant of rules, have unforseen issues, lack basic understanding of the game... the list of fun goes on and on. With only one game piece this year, this should have been anticipated and adjusted to. Not to mention, changing foul points wouldn't do much. So an alliance partner violates G40. It will affect your ranking, which is unfortunate, but you playing your game is good enough for scout teams. If you have an alliance partner in eliminations that commits a technical foul, that is ENTIRELY on the alliance itself, with an exception for all rulings that I am about to get to.

Even though everyone has been conditioned to target, complain, and in return, receive hivemind karma from the annual Greater Toronto East Regional thread and drama factory, even 1114 representatives said that the fouls were the alliance's burden. So what if an opposing ball lands in your robot? For once, FIRST made it very clear that that kind of motion will be called as a technical foul every time, they made it clear that they will not change the intent of the rule, and stressed to teams that it was imortant to design around that situation not happening if you want to avoid the foul. If I lost a match on that foul I wouldn't necessarily be happy about it, but I wouldn't go full rage against the machine over it either--the rule has been clear for a while.

-Other issues in fouls dont necessarily rely in the points they give up, but how the fouls are administered. Referees, to my knowledge, aren't given an extensive, consistent supplement on the vague, subjective rules in the manual. While pinning is a very easy foul to call (much like a false start in football) some things like opponent possesion via repeated taps of the ball, exactly how to call G28 violations, etc., are far more subjective issues (subjective like judging at the 3000 winter Olympic events that are judged). The lack of concreteness to work with results in inconsistent calls. While the referee is consulting the angel and devil on their shoulder about a violation of G12, they could miss a G40 happening right next to them, while a G28 is almost certainly occuring at midfield, but by the time the tablet is mashed at like a phone during a Flappy Bird session, it's hard ot tell who-hit-who there, and there was probably an assist as well during all of that, and now there's a bumper on the field... see what I mean?

Foul points aren't the issue. It's the teams, the partners, and the calls. The same as it ever was, but now with more obvious ramifications and as a result, more bellyaching over the wrong things.

Last edited by PayneTrain : 10-03-2014 at 02:45. Reason: 2AM dyslexia is best dyslexia