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Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery
Or are you saying that 2007 was somehow a no-wheels game?
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Some teams in 2007 had wheel-less robots. They tended to have a set of ramps instead.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Maldridge422
In the wake of Aerial Assist, perhaps an overhaul of the penalty/foul system? Changes to how fouls are assessed against individual teams as opposed to alliances? Or maybe new classes of fouls that don't quite fit the yellow/red card system?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Brandon Ha
Maybe, we will see the recognition by the GDC that all games from here on out will have rules in place to protect the offensive robots and punish the defensive game for aggressive defense...
Large object -> Aggressive defense -> AntiPenalty.
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For these two, I'm going to guess that there will be rework. HOWEVER, for Brandon, there were almost too many rules protecting the offense in past seasons. (I.E. if they had a ziptie touching the key, you couldn't brush 'em or you'd get hit with a rather nasty foul.) Back in my day, if you didn't have a tough robot, you probably wouldn't make elims because you were fixing stuff. Defense is a legitimate strategy. It should only be restricted if absolutely necessary: Safety, or a clearly-defined, highly visible area where defense cannot be played (and if it's not for safety, leave it at a regular foul unless even that will be an advantage).
That said, I'm going to say that they'll probably be looking really hard at enforcement and impact. Fully half the fouls in the book last year were technical fouls, mostly for minor stuff. (See: G12 in Week 1) And hard to spot, too--anybody see the refs miss a bunch of G40 calls? Oh, so you didn't see 'em either. (All HPs who committed one and got away with it, speak up now. We won't change any match scores.) And the tech foul score compared to an elite-alliance score, not much, but for an average-alliance score, or a 3v2 score, killer if you committed one. And don't forget the whole "refs-as-scorekeepers" part.
Here's what I see for a change in the fouls: I would hope that the GDC puts scorekeepers back in (it's not all THAT hard to train 'em, hopefully), and lets the refs focus on getting the calls right. Also, hopefully the fouls are more balanced, possibly adding a "Minor Foul" category such that the ratio is approximately 1:2:4, minor:foul:technical, and there are fewer of them to be called (and fewer judgement calls, with more flexible judgement, like the later version of G12!). Yellow and red cards are fine, as they are intended to be very severe penalties and only used if warranted.