paper: Spanking the Children

[Jim Zondag]

Thread created automatically to discuss a document in CD-Media.

Spanking the Children by Jim Zondag

[Jay Meldrum]

Very interesting read. Cool to read some of the history behind the penalties in past FIRST games.

I would agree with you on the 50 point penalties this year. They pretty much end the match for any team that gets one.

In Waterford, we received 50 points due to the other alliance ingesting our ball. This happened when someone on our alliance was trying to pick up the ball and pushed into the opposing teams intake. The crowd was very upset when they were given this penalty because it was clear they did not try to intake the ball, it was pushed up into them, even though the team that pushed it into them was trying to pick it up themselves.

Though the rules are very clear on this; G12..."A BALL that becomes unintentionally lodged on a ROBOT will be considered POSSESSED by the ROBOT. It is important to design your ROBOT so that it is impossible to inadvertently or intentionally POSSESS an opponent’s BALL."

This does make a very difficult design constraint for teams.

[Thad House]

That was a very interesting read, and alot of good information for us that have only been around a few years.

One big thing I've noticed is alot of the scores seem really inflated. Last time penalties had a large influence on games, it took away from your score, instead of giving it to the other team. So it does look like the scores are inflated, but if they worked like the old way, I bet we'd see alot more 0 score matches.

Im my opinion, low number of game piece games will always be harder to correctly penalize. Each piece has a much larger outcome on the final score, and its really hard to calculate penalties for this. Last year most penalties handed out, at least where I saw, were worth 1 game piece, where i'd guess about 15 disks on average were scored. This year, the most common penalty is worth 1 full cycle, but alliances have much more trouble scoring that, so the penalty to scoring ratio is much higher this year then last, and in fact any game I can remember since 2010.

[magnets]

This is very cool.

Robots with 6 cim two speed drives, which now can be bought, are very, very fast this year, and high speed collisions between robots going 16 fps are destructive, especially if a ball pickup device is involved. Back before districts, some teams would play between 16 - 19 matches at one event to qualify for the championship. Now, teams who will end up at CMP will have played over 20 rounds (not included replays) at each of at least two district events, plus matches at the district chamionship. Reliability is a great feature for this year.

EDIT: There's one thing I disagree with. As a spectator game, 2003 was better. Autonomous was exciting, with lots of robots going quickly, smashing through bins, getting air off the ramp, and smashing into other robots, and teleop just turned into battlebots.

[rees2001]

Great paper Jim. I still remember your reaction at Championship in 2008 when the opposing alliance crashed into your drivers station wall in autonomous and knocked your controls off the shelf. When your driver team jumped in to catch it, your. Team was penalized. You went OFF!

[cadandcookies]

As someone who didn't compete in FRC until 2011, this was a very interesting read, especially for the history. Thank you for sharing this.

I suppose I hadn't completely realized how good the last three games have been.

[ErvinI]

Violence was still pretty much unchecked and strategies of pounding the offense into the rack while they attempted to score abounded (ask Karthik about this sometime).

Can't wait to hear this story .

As for 2013, the only penalty gripe I really had with it was the massive penalty for inadvertently touching a robot in the act of climbing, which was worth around 50 points. Fortunately, this happened rarely, although it did happen to us at Buckeye (our back end swung into 1551 while they were hanging in QF 3-3 and we were trying to get to our end of the field. They shook on the bar for what felt like an eternity, but ended up staying on the bar. They got assessed an automatic climb (+30 pts), we were assessed a technical foul (+20 pts), and their original 10 pt. climb was still valid).

[EricH]

Originally Posted by ErvinI

Can't wait to hear this story .

I'll let Karthik fill in the gory details, but suffice it to say that the reffing was extremely inconsistent between fields at Championship. 1114 and 330 played on a field with very lenient reffing--you could tear someone's robot apart and probably get away with it (Again, ask Karthik--I think he's got a better memory on that one that I do). OTOH, on Einstein, a simple robot-robot high collision that was a result of two robots going to the same scoring space and just happened to tip one over resulted in a disable-DQ to the other alliance.

but the game was always compromised by a collection of penalty rules which seemed to have been written by people who had never built or driven a robot.

This particular item rather bugs me. I would REALLY like to know exactly how many current GDC members have EVER been ON an FRC team, in any capacity whatsoever. Some of their rulings in the past have been pretty lousy, to say the least. (My favorite question was dished out by FRC116 in 2011, I suspect by Mr. Lavery himself after he left the GDC, asking exactly what in the rules prohibited a certain activity, given that it had previously been allowed by Q&A and appeared to fit all the rules for the minibots. In the process, the author made the entire GDC look like a bunch of... well, I won't say exactly what. Wish I could find it; it's in an old Q&A system.) With all the "possession" questions they had early in the season this year, it still took two or three updates to clarify an item that could REALLY affect the game--and the fact that clarification was needed was shown by the sheer number of Q&As on the topic.

[P.J.]

Originally Posted by EricH

I'll let Karthik fill in the gory details, but suffice it to say that the reffing was extremely inconsistent between fields at Championship. 1114 and 330 played on a field with very lenient reffing--you could tear someone's robot apart and probably get away with it (Again, ask Karthik--I think he's got a better memory on that one that I do). OTOH, on Einstein, a simple robot-robot high collision that was a result of two robots going to the same scoring space and just happened to tip one over resulted in a disable-DQ to the other alliance.

My team (910) still talks about this one...it's hard to forget about your alliance getting red carded on Einstein.

[Ian Curtis]

Jim,

This is an excellent paper. I never realized/forgot that contact inside the bumper zone was never in its own class, and I never knew that penalties started in FRC at the same time I did.

I think your spell check may have gone and changed "Aerial" to "Arial" though. Or you may have something against sans-serif fonts.

[cmrnpizzo14]

As high as penalty values are this year, according to past years tech foul point values are consistent. A tech foul in 2012 was 9 points (a full hopper of 3 balls in the 3 point goal). In 2013 it was 50 points 20 points (a full hopper of 4 alliance disks in the pyramid goal). In 2014 it is 50 points (a 3 assist goal with a catch over the truss).

The GDC seems to pick a value for the tech foul so that there is no situation where it is more beneficial to take the foul than it is to try to play "clean" defense.

Do I think that it is too easy to get a tech foul this year? Yes, some infractions should not be considered automatic technical fouls. Do I think that 50 points is what the value of those fouls should be? Also yes, it is the same logic that set the point values in previous years.

I wish that there were a foul level between regular and technical. Something that was more serious than 20 points but less than 50. Or maybe just more fouls moved from 50 points down to 20 now that the GDC can see the average score of most games.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by cmrnpizzo14

As high as penalty values are this year, according to past years tech foul point values are consistent.

Except that in 2012 and 2013, you could have three robots with full hoppers. In 2014, you can only have one robot with a full hopper.

[cmrnpizzo14]

Originally Posted by inkling16

Except that in 2012 and 2013, you could have three robots with full hoppers. In 2014, you can only have one robot with a full hopper.

Then theoretically a foul is more damaging because there is only one robot scoring. One foul this year could potentially stop an entire alliance from scoring whereas a foul in previous years slows down the alliance 33% (pseudo-math, I know but I'm not sure how else to look at it without some serious analysis).

By this logic, a tech foul should be actually worth more points this year because it can be more harmful against the scoring alliance.

I hadn't really thought of it this way before. Wouldn't it suck if your robot was holding a 30 point ball, lining up to shoot in the last ten seconds of the match, and then was pinned for 8 seconds? If the value of the fouls was significantly lower, it would be "worth it" for the other team to draw that foul. Intentionally fouling isn't "in the spirit of FIRST," and the point value of these fouls makes a lot more sense now.

I think that you are with a lot of people on this one. Most people don't see that the logic behind the values of the fouls is to rule out any situation where it would be beneficial just to take the foul. Imagine if the last 30 seconds of a match became like the last 2 minutes of a basketball game where the losing team actually benefits from fouling in many cases. Even though these cases seem ludicrous, FIRST teams will find a loophole if there is one. I imagine that it wouldn't seem so ludicrous if it was a viable strategy one year, like in 2004 when Jim said teams would force penalties by ramming the opponents into their goals.

[billylo]

"theoretically" is different from "practically".

Practically:

When a foul occurs, the percentage of time that it affects a robot that has 50 pts in the hopper (very low), compared to the # of times a robot has a full hopper of discs or basketballs (very high) in 2012 and 2013.

[pntbll1313]

Originally Posted by billylo

"theoretically" is different from "practically".

Practically:

When a foul occurs, the percentage of time that it affects a robot that has 50 pts in the hopper (very low), compared to the # of times a robot has a full hopper of discs or basketballs (very high) in 2012 and 2013.

On the topic of "theoretically" vs "practically" think back last year when 50pt fouls were called for bumping a robot that was attempting to do its 10pt climb.

Practically:
When a foul occurred, the percentage of time that it affected a robot that was capable of a 30 pt climb was (very low).