[FTC]: FIRST Rules Traditions and Practices

[Joachim]

This is a "critical" comment and suggestion for FTC and other FIRST programs, so let me say this up front: I have been involved with FIRST programs for six years at various levels, and I personally have benefitted and have seen others benefit significantly from their participation in these programs.

Now (slowly and gradually) to the point:

It seems as if there is a tradition of unecessarily avoiding amending the rules in FRC, FTC (now and previosly as VEX) and FLL. At times it even looks like a long-running inside joke for the official game rules responders to see how many separate rules they can combine in order to say "no" to some proposed robot design or strategy. Even when the answers are short, strategy or design questions are sometimes answered with a strained interpretation of the rules as if to say "do what we meant, not what we said."

I guess that this tradition grew out of the now discontinued practice of private responses to questions on rules and strategy. Under that practice, amendments to the game rules might give away the strategy or design ideas that prompted the amendments, so amending would understandably be avoided when possible.

Under the new practice of answering all questions in a public forum, this old reason for avoiding amending the rules is gone. But the tradition against amending seems to persist. How else can you explain answers like this one from yesterday on the FTC game rules? A straightforward reading of the rules does not give the result in the answer. How does simply moving a plastic laundry basket have to "damage" or "tip" it? The rules committee seems to be saying "do what we meant, not what we said."

Why does this matter? Why should the rules committee(s) for FIRST competitions amend the rules instead of giving strained interpretations? After all, the interpretations, strained and otherwise, are all public now.

There are four main reasons, in my admittedly not too well-informed opinion:

(1) Amending the rules when needed, instead of giving strained interpretations as if they were plain, would help train FIRST participants in respect for the language of design goals and specifications, and would emphasize to them the need for and importance of written documentation, including appropriate revision and version control.

(2) Amending the rules when needed, instead of giving strained interpretations as if they were plain, would help train game design committee members in respect for the language of design goals and specifications, and emphasize to them the need for and importance of written documentation, including appropriate revision and version control.

(3) Amending the rules when needed, instead of giving strained interpretations as if they were plain, would give all subsequent readers of the rules the early benefit of the work of previous readers, questioners, and game designers/rules commitee members, with less difficulty and time than is typcially involved in studying the rules, then reviewing every forum post and answer, then synthesizing or harmonizing them to finally obtain an adequate understanding of the game.

(4) Amending the rules when needed, instead of giving strained interpretations as if they were plain, would over time create a more robust body of rules, and possibly an improved rules writing process, so that the FIRST competitions and the design excercises within them would become more like an innovation team addressing a well-studied need, and less like a corporate engineering group trying to decode what the boss is thinking, or what the corporate tradition will find acceptable, despite what the specification says or the market study concludes. At present, the typical looseness of the rules tends to discourage innovation.

[JesseK]

Hmm.

FIRST even stated the intent of rule R4 ... no extension outside of the field so as to prevent the crew from being hurt. Yet R4 can't be further amended without constraining other possible designs that go with the intent of the rule. Also, the poster goes against the intent of the program -- moving the outside goal removes all possibility of scoring in it since there's no targetting system involved with it ... just dead reckoning from the perspective of the field and an assumed shared agreement of where the outer goal should be.. So moving the goal is in itself unsportsmanlike, therefore isn't GP.

Ask yourself what you'd do in that situation -- would you constantly ammend rules and break even one of the 1000 teams' designs that do go with your intent only to have an upset, frustrated team ... or would you cover your bases with the one team who's blatently going against your stated intent of the rule?

The answer to the poster's question is clear to me, as is the "why" for it, yet in this country we have this culture that "intent is just a suggestion". Hence the response seems logical to me. The damage to the field isn't the physical damage to the bucket, but rather the damage is to the assumption of where the goal is. If no one ever went against the intent, the question wouldn't have even come up.

[GaryVoshol]

Your premise falls apart when you look at FRC Lunacy. There were 19 team updates resulting in 25 revisions of the 9 chapters of the manual. Not that some of us wouldn't have appreciated a few more changes ... (bumpers, anyone?)

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by JesseK

Also, the poster goes against the intent of the program -- moving the outside goal removes all possibility of scoring in it since there's no targetting system involved with it ... just dead reckoning from the perspective of the field and an assumed shared agreement of where the outer goal should be.. So moving the goal is in itself unsportsmanlike, therefore isn't GP.

I know that this isn't legal and thus isn't GP to do, but if it were, I'd hesitate to call any legal game strategy "un-GP". You could go down a slippery slope and basically declare defense "un-GP" this way, or taking up the whole bar in 2004, etc. etc. Not only would this be an effective defensive strategy, you could pull the goal close to the field to allow for a short range dump, much easier to accomplish scoring wise than a long range shot. But alas it's illegal so the point is moot.

[jamie_1930]

I don't understand why this has become such a strong tradition in FIRST to try and loosely interpret and bend the rules when you understand in full depth what FIRST means when they say you are not allowed to interfere with the communication of other robots. It seems more of like a joke to do this and can be at times, but I see this loose interpretation of the rules and the act of saying, "well it doesn't say..." to become a waste of time when in the thick of design

[Joachim]

"I see this loose interpretation of the rules and the act of saying, 'well it doesn't say...' to become a waste of time when in the thick of design"

I see it just the opposite. How do you begin designing unless you first decide generally what you want the designed thing to do? And how do you decide what you want it to do unless you know what is possible or permitted for it to do under the rules?

It is not an issue of what the rules do not say, but of what they do say, and of making what they do say match what the game designers intended.

Use of loosely written rules and reliance on "spirit of the game" or other strained interpretations to fill the gaps creates a game environment that encourages conformity and convention and discourages innovation.

[jamie_1930]

Originally Posted by Joachim

"I see this loose interpretation of the rules and the act of saying, 'well it doesn't say...' to become a waste of time when in the thick of design"

I see it just the opposite. How do you begin designing unless you first decide generally what you want the designed thing to do? And how do you decide what you want it to do unless you know what is possible or permitted for it to do under the rules?

It is not an issue of what the rules do not say, but of what they do say, and of making what they do say match what the game designers intended.

Use of loosely written rules and reliance on "spirit of the game" or other strained interpretations to fill the gaps creates a game environment that encourages conformity and convention and discourages innovation.

I think you misunderstood what I meant. What has happened in many design sessions we've had people will go off on random tangents with things that are blatantly illegal in the game, but are worded in a way that they can say "well its not really that" but it's the same thing.

[dtengineering]

Originally Posted by Joachim

How does simply moving a plastic laundry basket have to "damage" or "tip" it? The rules committee seems to be saying "do what we meant, not what we said."

I believe the GDC response was that moving the laundry basket would damage the "scoring area". Which, presumably, was specified as illegal in the rules.

Without having read the FTC rules in detail, and just basing my comments on the GDC reply, I can conceive that the laundry basket is meant to be part of the "scoring area"... perhaps a physical manifestation of the scoring area boundary... and that by moving the laundry basket the scoring area has been changed... and since the "scoring area" was no longer as specified in the rules that the scoring area was therefore damaged.

Although no physical harm would come to the laundry basket, there would be harm to the overall "scoring area" as defined in the rules.

Damage, after all, does not always require destruction!

But I do appreciate how it feels to see the GDC make a ruling that one disagrees with... but perhaps the reason I find it so frustrating when there is an FRC ruling with which I disagree is because it is such a rare occurance.

I think we can all agree that the GDC's for the various robot games do about as good a job as is humanly possible given that they have thousands of fairly bright people around the world reading the rules and looking for a legal strategic advantage.

Jason

[Joachim]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

Without having read the FTC rules in detail, and just basing my comments on the GDC reply, I can conceive that the laundry basket is meant to be part of the "scoring area"... perhaps a physical manifestation of the scoring area boundary... and that by moving the laundry basket the scoring area has been changed... and since the "scoring area" was no longer as specified in the rules that the scoring area was therefore damaged. . . . Damage, after all, does not always require destruction!

True, damage does not necessarily require destruction, and strategies aimed solely at "damage" or "destruction" of Scoring Areas are prohibited as follows:

<G8> Strategies and mechanisms aimed solely at the destruction, damage, tipping over, or entanglement of Robots or Scoring Areas are not in the spirit of the FIRST Tech Challenge and are not allowed.

But here is the definition of Scoring Areas:

2.3 Game Definitions
Scoring Areas – There are three (3) Scoring Areas where balls may be Scored – two within the 12’x12’ Playing Field and one outside the Playing Field. Balls will be counted for the corresponding alliance color based on where they are Scored.

Off-field Goal – Two baskets that measure 15”w x 23”d x 15”h and are placed 4 feet away from the front side of the Playing Field. Balls can be shot into these goals only during the last 30 seconds of the Match. Behind the Off-field Goal will be a netted Backstop that will be used to contain balls in the Competition Area. The netting is not intended to be a reliable Backstop to bounce balls off to score in the Off-field Goal. Teams should expect a large variability in the tautness of the netting.

I guess the "damage" is because if you move a basket, it is no longer "placed 4 feet away" as in the definition, and is therefore no longer within the definition, and is therefore no longer a "goal", and has therefore been "destroyed" as a goal. But the baskets are obviously "placed" sometime before the match, and it is a strained interpretation of the word "placed" to say that anything "placed" cannot be moved without damaging or destroying it. (Maybe if the word "located" had been used in the definition instead of "placed" for example, the question about moving the baskets might not even have needed asking.)

A negative ruling is fine. (If a team sees a strategy that the rules seem to allow but that the the GDC probably did not intend, and if the strategy is one the team would prefer not to have to face, the team should at least ask a question.) Some ruling needs to be made, and as you point out, we can hardly expect the developers to see all of the potential loopholes or creative possibilities that the many thousands of individuals on teams might see. I would even expect a negative ruling on this point, based on the apparent intent of the rules, as shown by statements like "balls can be shot into these goals."

What I am suggesting is that where the rules need either (1) a strained interpretation or (2) a small change or addition--in order to close a loophole or gap of some kind--ideally they should be changed.