[EricH]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

I'm not a fan of foul points, but if there's no other way I agree with Jared - penalty point value alone is not enough to be a deterrent. The rules and game design have to be carefully considered to make sure fouls are a) clear-cut and b) avoidable

I agree here. Clear rules, clear fouls, and design the game so that fouls aren't a good idea. But the specific examples you suggest, and your proposed solutions, could have been better chosen.

Take G28: "Initiating deliberate or damaging contact with an opponent ROBOT on or inside the vertical extension of its FRAME PERIMETER is not allowed" [...]

Imagine if G28 were instead worded "contact with an opponent Robot inside the vertical extension of its FRAME PERIMETER is not allowed". Now it's easy to see when a foul will be called, and who will be at fault.

And it's REALLY easy to get 90% of all event attendees ticked at the ref who just happened to be looking elsewhere when team X barely taps team Y, doing almost nothing to them, in a close match that team X wins. You want to stand in front of 3000 FIRSTers and announce that that sort of foul, which may or may not have affected the match play, or may or may not have been called, changed the winner, be my guest. I'll be in the volunteer lounge until the mob goes elsewhere.

Please note that the key word for Week 1 was "deliberate" or "damaging", not "initiating". (This was changed after tons of fouls were dished out during that week, some apparently due to Team X running into Team Y and Team X taking damage.) It can be pretty clear when there's deliberate contact, and definitely clear on damaging contact. (Though... I must say, in passing, that the RSLs are pretty poorly protected by most teams in a high-contact game. At least a couple of damaging calls were made during Week 1 because the RSL broke on contact.)

G12 is a similar situation. Possessing an opponents ball is reasonably a) clear-cut (at least as far as possessions of any ball were this year), but for the most part they were b) unavoidable as written. There were instances of crazy bounces or even human players causing G12 violations. Creating a new "incidental" version of G12 with a smaller penalty did not address the avoidability problem.

A problem that was designed into the game. Now, I disagree that possessions of an opponents' ball were unavoidable; many teams managed to avoid possessing an opponents' ball. A number of others were victims of a bad bounce. I think the HP possession cause is already dealt with by G14--intention to cause a violation of a rule. That said, I would agree with having a clause to the effect of "This penalty shall not be applied if the offending robot immediately removes the ball from their robot to the field, and assuming such removal happens in a timely manner (<X seconds)". And, of course, the refs get some kind of signaling method to let teams and the audience know about said foul being imminent, similar to the pin count.