IRI (CONTEMPLATED) Rule Changes

[Bill_B]

Anyone want to author a survey monkey page for this stuff?

I was looking at what was required to make a survey and thinking it is too complicated by half.

[Craig Roys]

I like anything that reduces the value of the minibot race - too often, the actual match is pointless; just wait to see who wins the minibot race. I've seen matches where an alliance has just dominated on tube scoring, but lost the match because of minibots. I like minibots being 20 pts as long as they climb the tower; or even the possibility of keeping it a race, but diminishing the point values so they don't dominate the scoring. Teams should be rewarded for being good tube hangers which is the primary objective of the game.

I also like the idea of ubertubes staying in play and reducing lane violations.

[IKE]

There are a lot of neat ideas, but personally, I think many go too far. The 3 objectives everyone seems to agree on are:
1. Slightly less restrictive penalties.
2. More emphasis on tubes.
3. Less emphasis on minibots.

I think some great ideas have been posted on #1, so I would like to discuss 2 and 3. The bottom row needs to be worth more. Currently they is very little incentive above bragging rights for that row. I would go with 2 pts, just like the middle. This would likely cause a fill of top, bottom, then middle. Also, this makes a logo on that row worth 12 points. I will return to this in a moment.
Minibots need a winner. Otherwise it looses a lot. It however does not need a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. In the grand tradition of first, let's reward the winner, and give the others a nice concellation. As far as point values go, I would award 2nd - 4th 10 points. This is less than a full mid or lower logo, but more than the third tube to complete that logo (that last tube is worth 12- 2*2=8 pts.). The question is then how much to award the winner of the minibot race. Depending on the emphasis level, I would go with 15 or 20 pts. 20 would be more in line with the historical significance, and 15 would be the minimum.

The other change I would do is the winner is the tower that gets 4 lights. To get the 10 points, you just have to hit the top because the sensors are not 100% reliable.

The changes along with relaxing the penalties should make for some really exciting game play, and allow foe better endgame strategy/optins.

[SavtaKenneth]

In my opinion increasing the emphasis on the tubes and reducing the emphasis on the minibots should be done by changing the value of one of them. The moment tubes are worth more they can swing the outcome of the match, reducing the value of the minibot drastically will only make unimportant. I think that the value of tubes on the bottom row should be increased to give the excellent tube scorers an edge however to retain the current minibot values, to still give them significance in the game.

[J_Miles]

Originally Posted by IKE

The bottom row needs to be worth more. Currently they is very little incentive above bragging rights for that row. I would go with 2 pts, just like the middle.

I couldn't agree more. I think two points is sufficiently valuable to make that bottom row plenty worthwhile, but not overpowered, and it will really count to separate the great alliances from the good alliance.

Originally Posted by IKE

Minibots need a winner. Otherwise it looses a lot. It however does not need a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. In the grand tradition of first, let's reward the winner, and give the others a nice concellation. As far as point values go, I would award 2nd - 4th 10 points.

I won't really suggest specific point values, but I think that there needs to be more balance. With the current system, if an alliance were to take first and second in the minibot race, their endgame score would yield a 25-point advantage over the other alliance (assuming the other alliance were able to score their minibots 3rd and 4th). I don't think that awarding 1st place a higher score and then assigning uniform values to 2nd-4th would be ideal; however, there should be more parity between 1st and 4th. I think that, if an alliance takes first and second in the minibot race, there should not be more than a ten- or fifteen-point swing if the other alliance was able to successfully score their minibots as well. To make the race still exciting, there needs to be different values for each place, but if all four towers were activated, the point margin, in my opinion, should be significantly smaller than 25 points. To me, ideally, the scoring would play out like (<1>+<2>)-(<3>+<4>)<=10 points. This way, an alliance could come from behind with the endgame in a tight match, but, coupled with increased value for the bottom row and decreased margin for victory in the endgame, strategy would be more critical to alliances because it would no longer be imperative to score the top minibot or top two minibots in each match that might be remotely close.

[StevenB]

If the rule is not changed to allow ubertubes to be hung in teleop, at least remove the penalty for doing so. That is, replace <G16> to read, "Ubertubes hung after the conclusion of the AUTONOMOUS PERIOD are not counted for points or as doublers for LOGO PIECES hung over them."

No team is going to intentionally hang a tube for zero points, and I've seen painful instances where a team was penalized because their robot released a tube but was still "supporting" it at the end of the autonomous period. As soon as they backed away, they incurred a penalty. It hurts enough to not score the ubertube; there's no need to rub salt in the wound.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by StevenB

If the rule is not changed to allow ubertubes to be hung in teleop, at least remove the penalty for doing so. That is, replace <G16> to read, "Ubertubes hung after the conclusion of the AUTONOMOUS PERIOD are not counted for points or as doublers for LOGO PIECES hung over them."

No team is going to intentionally hang a tube for zero points, and I've seen painful instances where a team was penalized because their robot released a tube but was still "supporting" it at the end of the autonomous period. As soon as they backed away, they incurred a penalty. It hurts enough to not score the ubertube; there's no need to rub salt in the wound.

40 actually lost Battlecry by 1 point because of this penalty. It was crazy.

[Marc S.]

I personaly don't know why were changing any of the scoring rules. The penalties are understandable but changing the way robots score doesn't make sense to me.

I would like the score board to display the times each minibot got(maybe that could decide points?). But having all minibots get the same amount of points just doesn't make sense to me, it removes the competitiveness and challenge of that part of the game.

The current setup rewards the 1st minibot with the advantage(if all 4 minbots reach the top) so even if they get 1st and 4th, they still lead that part of the game with 5 points. Certainly something that a good tube scorer can get around.

[RayTurner1126]

Originally Posted by StevenB

If the rule is not changed to allow ubertubes to be hung in teleop, at least remove the penalty for doing so. That is, replace <G16> to read, "Ubertubes hung after the conclusion of the AUTONOMOUS PERIOD are not counted for points or as doublers for LOGO PIECES hung over them."

No team is going to intentionally hang a tube for zero points, and I've seen painful instances where a team was penalized because their robot released a tube but was still "supporting" it at the end of the autonomous period. As soon as they backed away, they incurred a penalty. It hurts enough to not score the ubertube; there's no need to rub salt in the wound.

they are going to allow the ubertube to function as a doubler, but not the points you would get from autonomous (i.e. the 6 points if it were on the top row) and there wouldn't be a penalty

[AlecMataloni]

I'm an advocate for eliminating diminishing returns on the pegs. As with the FTC game this year (Barely any baton scoring & too much balancing), not enough emphasis was placed on the scoring of as many game pieces as possible. Instead, the endgame's point values encouraged many teams to head over to the minibot poles with plenty of time left in the match. I'm not hating on the teams that did this; however, I'm slightly disappointed that we didn't see higher scores due to the fact that, for many teams, it was not worth the trouble.

I hope the GDC has learned not to over-value any one scoring aspect of the game, especially not the endgame.

[J_Miles]

Originally Posted by AlecMataloni

I hope the GDC has learned not to over-value any one scoring aspect of the game, especially not the endgame.

Last year the opposite complaint could have been made about the endgame: few teams did it and did it well because it was worth so little and was so difficult (a good number elevated, but VERY few even attempted suspension).

The trouble with your comment is that the GDC can't possibly know how the game is going to turn out. Go back and watch the game animation from this year's kickoff: Dave specifically mentions that to get tubes, teams will have to traverse the entire playing field. From this is can be inferred that the GDC did not expect human players to be throwing tubes across the field into their own scoring zones. I think that with Breakaway, scores ended up climbing higher than the GDC expected, which caused the endgame to be undervalued. This year the endgame was, in fact, overvalued, but I think that, again, this was caused by the GDC being unable to predict exactly how matches would play out throughout the season, and you can't begrudge them that, as the game will invariably be played, in some ways, differently than the GDC intended almost every year.

[AlecMataloni]

You're absolutely right. It's wrong to blame the GDC for not being able to see into the future; however, if the game played out like they may have expected (with only slot loading robots), there's a possibility of tube scoring being even less frequent (with lane congestion issues, more defense, etc.) and the minibot race would've been even more over-valued.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Marc S.

I personaly don't know why were changing any of the scoring rules. The penalties are understandable but changing the way robots score doesn't make sense to me.

I would like the score board to display the times each minibot got(maybe that could decide points?). But having all minibots get the same amount of points just doesn't make sense to me, it removes the competitiveness and challenge of that part of the game.

The current setup rewards the 1st minibot with the advantage(if all 4 minbots reach the top) so even if they get 1st and 4th, they still lead that part of the game with 5 points. Certainly something that a good tube scorer can get around.

IRI traditional changes the rules, there are going to be changes.

I like keeping the minibot scoring, as it benefits us. But i'd be fine with it being changed.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by AlecMataloni

You're absolutely right. It's wrong to blame the GDC for not being able to see into the future; however, if the game played out like they may have expected (with only slot loading robots), there's a possibility of tube scoring being even less frequent (with lane congestion issues, more defense, etc.) and the minibot race would've been even more over-valued.

The main problem with the tube scoring in this game, IMO, is that ultimately most good alliances were able to fill the top row and most/all of the second row; at that point, additional tubes did not change the score much. I suspect the GDC was thinking it would not be so easy, and thus the differences between alliances would come in filling the top two rows, making for different score differences... of course I'm completely guessing here.

[sgreco]

After reading this thread again and all of the suggested changes, it seems that there is one problem with the game that everyone agrees on: People don't want otherwise-even matches to come down to the "minibot coinflip".

I personally would focus on basing the changes around having matches not be decided by a tenth of second in the minibot race, and actually be decided by effective strategy and execution on the field.