Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik
Dick,
First and foremost, continuing to call this strategy a "rule exploit" probably won't win you any friends or help you persuade anyone to your side of the argument. This strategy isn't an exploit, it's completely valid and well within the rules and was thought up by a LOT of people. There was a whole thread about it a while ago. I fail to see how something that so many people thought of can be an "exploit" in the sense you mean.
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My assessment is to call it an exploit because it takes advantage of what I consider a flaw or a
weakness in the rules that restricts expansion at towers to => OFFENSE-ONLY. I have yet to see any post indicating why this rule is necessary. How does OFFENSE-ONLY expansion at towers help to make the game better? It could have been applied for only the last 20 seconds, if encouraging hanging was the goal. Instead, what this rule has done is to allow loopers to gain what I feel is
unfair access to and
unfair control of the most critical ball flow point in the game. Once a team deploys an effective looper scheme, there is NO LONGER ANY FAIRNESS regarding balls returning to the field from their ramp. The design of the game ramp seems to have been done from the perspective that scored balls should re-enter play AT MID-FIELD, and in direction OPPOSITE TO the goal at which it was scored, This would tend to help keep the match scoring more balanced, and the game outcome more uncertain, but this idea gets circumvented by the looper scheme. Teams deployed the looper scheme because they saw that rules ALLOWED for for them to gain a
dramatic advantage at controlling the ball return flow. Sure, they still had to design and build well, in order to realize this advantage, but it is basically just the pursuit of the opportunity to gain an unfair, but still legal, advantage. I say most people would assess the advantage that deployed loopers achieve to be UNFAIR, and they would assess that the rules should not allow such an advantage to be available within the rules. Gaining an advantage within the rules is fine, but pursuing an unfair advantage within the rules => I call an this an EXPLOIT.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik
Also, I'm confused by the implications of your last statement there. You seem to be saying that a dominant strategy is bad for the game. I've always operated under the assumption that the FRC design process was about discovering and implementing a robot that can win the game. The whole premise is that there are some strategies and designs that are better than others. If you're looking for a game where you're guaranteed a level playing and close matches because everyone's evenly matched, then lobby for FRC NASCAR. Otherwise, you're admitting that some strategies are going to be better than others and you're down to a matter of degree.
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No, I'm saying that when this dominance is gained from pursuing a legal, but unfair, advantage, available with a well executed looper scheme, then, merely because the rules have created this this unequal access to balls situation, does not mean that exploiting it for blowout level dominance is going to increase the fan interest in the FIRST program.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik
If you think that this particular strategy in this particular game is just too dominating, then consider this: A single team out of a field of thousalynds has managed to make this work this flawlessly. If one robot in a thousand dominating this game is too much for you to handle, then, again, I point you to FRC NASCAR. In the FRC of my experience, there's a dominate robot in the field every single year.
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It is not about NASCAR, it is about fairness for ball access.
-Dick Ledford