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

[Donut]

Originally Posted by SM987

Given that it's stop build day, I haven't seen anyone overreact. That said, this is a minor plus for climbers and a minor bummer for floor loaders. I don't see it being a huge issue in anything but the highest level of competition.

I think this could have a drastic effect in low level qualification matches. Say you are a floor loader and are partnered with two robots with broken/inoperable/nonexistent shooters; the only method of getting frisbees is to get them from the loading station yourself, pick up the handful on your side of the field at the start of the match, or have human players throw them in the last 30 seconds. That last option is now gone, which means there is no way to get a suddenly large influx of discs that your rapid fire shooter can score. If you're going up against a good alliance that round what was already a difficult qualification match to win just became almost impossible.

The changes at the highest level of competition are up in the air to me. At the highest level most of the shooters would be very accurate and many teams would probably have floor pickups, which means there are likely to be few if any missed shots lying around before the last 30 seconds. Depending on how defense plays out this year though the alliance may have already exhausted most of the 45 human loading frisbees, in which case there's no difference since there is nothing to throw. I think the effect on the high level will be dependent on how effective defense is.

[GCentola]

I wasn't exactly sure what to say because most of it has already been explained somewhere so I guess I will say this:

This is frustrating. Making a change this late in the season seems a bit of a smack in the face to many teams who would have made different decisions were these rules in place week 1, but we may find out that it doesn't change much. Teams with the ability to floor-load may have an advantage during some parts of the game, but if you can do both well, it shouldn't be an issue. But as mentioned above, the lack of foresight is almost more frustrating than the rule-change itself - but it happened and the reasoning for doing so makes complete sense. The frisbee blizzard is rather terrifying behind the glass; "the game pieces are not foam balls or inflatable tubes-they are hard plastic discs of death." (thanks for the quote, Leeland)

There are a few posts throughout the thread (Andrew, Karthik, Leeland to name a few) that sum things up very well. In my opinion, the elite teams will always adapt whether or not they are frustrated and this is why they rise to the top every time. No doubt the best teams this year, whether they can floor-load or not, will move on and play a great game. Perhaps this is what we should do as well.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by dodar

1. It should have been relatively easy to do.
2. Almost every year, the good teams have been able to get game pieces off the ground or from HP(2012,2011,2010,2009,2007,2006,etc..)

1. That depends greatly on your strategy and design.

2. Blatantly false. Very few teams (let alone "good" teams) loaded directly from the HP in 2011 or 2012. Fewer still could do both (especially in 2011). The HP didn't even load robots in 2010 (unless you're counting the mandatory ball return, which was only directly interfaced by a handful of teams, and never to "load" their robot). 2009 was a mixed bag, but most HP took the opportunity to score directly over loading a robot. Almost nobody human loaded in 2007, and none of the elite teams did with regularity. 2006 is the only year you have a real argument for great teams doing both, but a majority picked human loading as their primary method, with several being exclusive human loaders (25 and 217 being the obvious examples).

[Gray Adams]

I've been completely isolated from any team or strategy for the last 5 weeks so maybe I haven't disocvered a lot of things you guys have, but I really don't see a massive strategy change. Whether or not there was a flood of frisbees in the endgame I still would have wanted a robot that picks up off the floor. It surprises me that teams would decide on picking up off the floor based on the last 30 seconds of throwing alone. My former team decided to pick up off the ground and climb for 30 points in the initial few strategy meetings (not sure what their plans are now, but I digress) because the intent was to pick frisbees up from missed shots, not just for the end of the game. Sure there's going to be a few less discs around, but at high levels of play human players seem to avoid the blizzard just to starve the opponents. What kind of change are we really going to see?

Sorry guys, I really don't see a big change in the way the game is played.

[coalhot]

I can see why the GDC changed the rules like they did, but I have a question: they only prevented the human players from throwing frisbees during the endgame. So what happens when a team with an overpowered shooter misses (for arguments sake, 50%) of the shots, and that 50% sail above the goal? There isn't a rule against this (as far as I know), and if a teams takes 20-40 shots a match, that's a lot of disks being chucked at the teams getting queued, possibly at a higher velocity then the HP would throw them.

A few teams had ridiculously overpowered shooters last year, I remember at BE, watching a shooter direct driven to two CIM's make every shot clear the alliance wall by about 20 feet. It's more difficult this season, but not impossible.

All in all, It's a decision that needed to happen when it happened; but it's something that the GDC should have seen coming, and put safety nets around the whole field, not just the two sides...

[Peyton Yeung]

Well our HPs are disgruntled to say the least. While the last 30 seconds of the match wasn't the only reason we went for ground loading it was a major one and it caused us to design everything on our robot around it. I guess we will just need to practice different strategies...or hope our alliance partners aren't very good at shooting.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by coalhot

I can see why the GDC changed the rules like they did, but I have a question: they only prevented the human players from throwing frisbees during the endgame. So what happens when a team with an overpowered shooter misses (for arguments sake, 50%) of the shots, and that 50% sail above the goal? There isn't a rule against this (as far as I know), and if a teams takes 20-40 shots a match, that's a lot of disks being chucked at the teams getting queued, possibly at a higher velocity then the HP would throw them.

<G03>

[Grim Tuesday]

The real issue I see is that throwing DISCS is still allowed. While there won't be quite the blizzard there was before, I fully expect six colored discs to be thrown for the HIGH GOAL in just about 75% of qualification matches. See the recent Q&A:

Q532 Q. In light of the 2/19/13 team update do colored discs thrown by human players in the last 30 seconds into the LOW, MIDDLE, or HIGH GOALS still count as SCORED?
A. Yes.

Our FEEDER was seeing ~4/20 in the HIGH GOAL and 1/20 in the PYRAMID GOAL. I'm sure there are better FEEDERS out there but just thinking about the numbers, that's 12 pts vs 5 pts. There is no reason to shoot for the PYRAMID GOAL with your colored DISCS and you will just end up with the same problem we had before of it being dangerous.

This seems like a game balance rather than a safety fix. Sure there are not going to be quite the blizzard of DISCS flying around but twelve is still quite a large number, more than enough to hit someone or break something.


On a balance side it makes sense. Our team had a number of people who could, from 50 ft and no pyramid in the way make in the range of 4 of 20 into the top goal. I have no doubts that other teams had better FEEDERS and we could be seeing humans hitting multiple shots per match. I don't want humans deciding my matches. This is a robotics competition.

I also suspect that the GDC noticed a large number of discs piling up on the center line and missed shots. This leads me to echo the thought that this will effect higher levels of play much more than lower; the more robots who use all three in AUTO the less there will be to pickup on the field.

My final question is why there was no way to reduce the effect of the DISCS no longer appearing near your goals in the last 30 seconds. If all that is required is that humans no longer throw DISCS in then why not have up to 12 (how many and if colored decided by the alliance) DISCS get dumped in like the balls in 2004. This would solve both the problem of the robots who were relying on the influx of DISCS in the last 30 seconds and the humans throwing hard shots.

[SM987]

Originally Posted by waialua359

This just about sums it up.

At the highest level at competitions.....i.e. playoffs, regional finals, Einstein, etc. it will make a big difference.

I agree Glenn, it definitely could.

Originally Posted by Donut

I think this could have a drastic effect in low level qualification matches. Say you are a floor loader and are partnered with two robots with broken/inoperable/nonexistent shooters...

I think many teams can relate here. You get the same dice roll stop build day changes or otherwise. I can recall a few matches won last year by a human player score, or where the scoring consisted of human player shots entirely. So it certainly could impact "lower level" competition.

Individually, many of us are bummed because it feels like our robot has lost some competitive value. Whether an alliance we are on is less valuable as a result... Guess we have to wait and see.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

I don't want humans deciding my matches. This is a robotics competition.

This is really what it comes down to. It's very unfortunate that the rule had to change this late, but in fact I believe it's a "better" rule.

[Bill_B]

At the outset, the GDC must have done some thinking about how the last 30 seconds would be played. The total number of disks in the game was decided at some point based on factors like expected scoring rate, percentage success and how many could be fit through those slots. It seems likely, however, that week 0 performances and machinery is quite a bit below the expected level of play for the game. If the GDC was expecting some number of disks to have already been scored (and out of play) at the 30 second mark, the remaining numbers of disks in a week 0 game probably far exceeded that number.

Then there is the time allotted for HP activity. I wonder if the GDC even considered reducing it to 20 or 15 seconds or even 10. Maybe that's too great a change to the match management software to have been considered. We should be used to the GDC offering only partial explanations for their decisions by now.

Teams do not bring their completed machines to week 0, in general. I heard several explanations about the robots being the practice machine or not carrying all mechanisms. Floor pickup devices were among those listed as missing or under development. It was obvious that even in the elimination matches, the teams had intermediate goals for their play that were only experimental or developmental. For example, if a shooter had been out of adjustment, the team would explore alternate tactics that did not involve shooting.

[Wayne Doenges]

FRC Team isn't to concerned about the rule change. We can floor harvest or human load. We can pick up frisbees right side up or inverted. No Problem.

[Squeakypig]

Our team originally made our floor pick-up for autonomous mode, so no harm done there. However, a large concern in the design of our pick-up was inverted discs. We decided we needed to be able to right them since the "hammer throw" was the most common way we could see teams throwing discs at the end, and they landed upside-down. We could have designed a much simpler frisbee pick-up if we knew that there probably wasn't going to be very many (if any) upside down frisbees.

That being said, +24 points in autonomous is still too good to pass up!

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

Then there is the time allotted for HP activity. I wonder if the GDC even considered reducing it to 20 or 15 seconds or even 10. Maybe that's too great a change to the match management software to have been considered. We should be used to the GDC offering only partial explanations for their decisions by now.

You think telling 6 overzealous teenagers that now they only have 15 seconds to score as many points as possible is going to make things less crazy? One of the recorded matches from Suffield shows an HP hurling frisbees overhand behind his back every 1-2 seconds. Spray and Pray sure came to mind there.

I think telling them they only have 6 discs and 30 seconds makes things better. Then they have an incentive to make every disc count and are much more likely to be accurate.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

This seems like a game balance rather than a safety fix. Sure there are not going to be quite the blizzard of DISCS flying around but twelve is still quite a large number, more than enough to hit someone or break something.

I think it primarily IS a safety fix; yes 12 is still plenty of discs, but, assuming half of all discs are shot (low-mid level play?), 12 discs being thrown is a lot less than 45 discs being thrown.