Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Radical Pi

I don't see anything that prevents the humans from throwing the colored discs into the 3 point goal. New prediction: there will be more colored discs scored in the 3 point goal than in the pyramid goal.

I dont see that happening unless a station runs dry of white discs. Those color discs will be a coveted commodity; unless you dont have a pyramid scorer team on your alliance.

[Madison]

They wrote a rule that allowed human players to throw a large quantity of frisbees at goals 50' away -- but only in a limited time frame -- and they're surprised that .. they do? I don't understand how you could ever imagine that the last 30 seconds was going to play out any other way.

[Kevin Sevcik]

While the timing of this decision is extremely unfortunate, I don't think you can argue much with the rationale. The nets are several feet back from the field, meant to protect the crowd and venue. Inside the nets are refs, scorers, field reset, etc. The refs in particular have to work right next to the field to properly ref the game. Particularly in the end game when they need to make calls on the legality of climbs. The GDC had to make the call of whether to let the rules stand or let the refs decide between properly observing and calling a match or getting clocked in the head by errant HP frisbees.

I think the call is the right one from a safety and game management standpoint, I just think it should have been blindingly obvious to the GDC from the start that the original rules were going to result in this. Give a HP even a small chance at a scoring a point, and they're going to take it. You only have to look at the cross court shooting attempts from last year to see that.

EDIT: My mistake, nets are right on the guard rails. On the other hand, the nets don't cover the area over the goals. Which means lots of frisbees flying over the player stations, which is presumably what they're worried about. So trade clocking a ref with clocking a queued team/robot instead.

[Ankit S.]

Well our human players are gonna be bummed...

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Inside the nets are refs, scorers, field reset, etc. The refs in particular have to work right next to the field to properly ref the game.

I think the refs are outside the nets actually, but I can double check today.

[RoboTigers1796]

Wow... the day of stop build. That seriously stinks and changes our whole outlook on our success this season.

I'm sure many others are in our boat too. As IndySam indicated, we went against the norm and opted for an efficient pick-up instead of a climb. We anticipated this "blizzard" from day 1 of build, why couldn't the GDC.

With this in mind we thought in 25 seconds we could score at least 6-8 discs for 18-24 points with a 3 second 10 point hang to effectively beat or match a standard 30 pt hang thanks to the 30 second nemo storm. And with that our season is enormously affected. Such a shame.

Oh well, best of luck to the rest of the teams that went with this strategy.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by BJC

This is very... irritating.

What's done is done though, no amount of complaining will change it back. Keep that in mind when posting in this thread.

Regards, Bryan

Yeah I gotta agree. As a fellow floor loader, sucks but oh well.

This will certainly make matches less exciting though. Why didn't they discuss taller netting instead of eliminating part of the game?

While I can understand how this can be devastating for teams who planned on amazing group pickup, there are still great uses for ground-pickup bots.

-Not every frisbee is going to be scored on its first try. This is for both alliances. Discs will miss, and in a match where there is a full-court shooter on each alliance, I think every missed frisbee, on both alliance sides, will be the difference between loosing a match. I think a ground pickup bot that utilizes the frisbees missed by an opponent can easily change the tide of the match. Instead of 45 frisbees for each team, suddenly the team with the ground pickup bot gets 60 frisbees, and the other team gets 30.

-Autonomous mode is the second-highest ranking factor next to qualification scores. Teams who can get the frisbees from the ground are not only going to score a major lead for their team, but also rank higher.

All is not lost.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Madison

They wrote a rule that allowed human players to throw a large quantity of frisbees at goals 50' away -- but only in a limited time frame -- and they're surprised that .. they do? I don't understand how you could ever imagine that the last 30 seconds was going to play out any other way.

I think they expected the nets to work significantly better than they seemed to/found the large amount to be significantly distracting to the audience close to the field-even if the nets worked fine.

Overall, I'm not sure how to feel about this; again, it makes floor pickup feel more like something we could have possibly given up, but I'm confident it's importance isn't TOTALLY diminished now...I guess my opinion will depend on how our climbing mechanism goes...

[ehfeinberg]

NOOO!!!

I really wanted to score some discs into the top goal, but I agree that the GDC made the right choice. There were just too many discs being thrown. Now to start practicing on the nearly impossible pyramid goal!

This decision does help my team, and all other teams with a full court shooter. Now that there is no fury of discs in the last 30 seconds, teams with ground pickup are going to need some quick supply of discs across the field.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Madison

They wrote a rule that allowed human players to throw a large quantity of frisbees at goals 50' away -- but only in a limited time frame -- and they're surprised that .. they do? I don't understand how you could ever imagine that the last 30 seconds was going to play out any other way.

I agree - I find it incredibly disappointing and borderline unbelievable that the GDC did not anticipate what was going to happen during the last 30 seconds of the game. What other possible outcome could there be, other than all of the remaining frisbees being thrown as quickly as possible in the vague direction of a goal or robot? And why could they not simply expand the nets, for example, rather than changing a clearly stated rule on the last day of build?

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

This is devastating. Our strategy was that fast floor pickup could even out not having a 30 point hang. This completely removes that idea. I understand safety concerns but why did my students just spend 6 weeks perfecting floor pickup and being able to drive around on a lot of discs. I'm just glad there seems to be a lot of full court shooters, that can replace the humans throwing.

More than anything this just killed team moral.

Yes. We made a lot of design trade offs to support floor pickup. BIG ones. Now, unless we have a 'pray and spray' teammate, we're going to be at a disadvantage having to traverse the field to get discs.

We sacrificed a high climb mechanism based on the math of a floor pickup with readily available discs, and what we could do in 30 seconds.

I'm pretty angry about this.

[Hjelstrom]

Now they should lower the climb points to 5,10,15 to even it out! :-)

[JohnSchneider]

Youre still going to have lots of Frisbees on the floor from the tons and tons* of full court shooters. And your floor pickup still gives you a huge edge in autonomous.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Hjelstrom

Now they should lower the climb points to 5,10,15 to even it out! :-)

No. Climbing would not even be worth it if they were that low.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Inside the nets are refs, scorers, field reset, etc. The refs in particular have to work right next to the field to properly ref the game. Particularly in the end game when they need to make calls on the legality of climbs.

Everyone is outside the nets during the match. The refs are outside the nets. Probably because of their position close to the nets, they are more protected from discs than others that are standing or sitting 8, 10 or 15 feet away.

I'm sure the GDC and others at FIRST saw the potential for people that have to be near the field - FTA, score table, reset, next match on deck, etc - being bombarded by errant discs. It was bad enough when we had to avoid flying tubes, and only a limited number of those. When a disc is launched for a 54' hail mary, I can see it would be very easy for it to fly over the opposite alliance station or curve out over the net.

It's unfortunate that a rule change has to be made this late, but better now than after Week 1.