The Advantage of Being in Position for a Replay

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by jblay

I guess I see what everyone is saying, but then again I have experienced instances were matches that should have been replayed aren't replayed because it hurt the winning alliance.

It sounds like you have a specific example/examples in mind.

In almost every case I've seen, the affected team/alliance asks for a replay, or is told by the Head Ref/FTA/FTAA that the issue does not warrant a replay. Once the Head Ref makes a decision, I doubt that anything the winning alliance says at that point would change the decision on replaying or not. That being said, I think if anything fishy happens in a match (dead robots, ball re-entered to the wrong part of the field by a ref, etc.), the winning alliance should still inquire as to why the match was not granted a replay. I don't think it's their place to request a replay since they have no knowledge of the cause of the issue, but they should hold the Referees accountable for their reasoning to not replay.

What I think we really need is a bit more transparency in to what kinds of things are considered replay eligible. Certainly a true field fault (ie, Roomba stuck under the bridge) is always cause for a replay, and robot mechanical or electrical failures are almost never replayable. But there's a really big middle grey area of "Comms issues" that are poorly understood by teams and not always well explained by FIRST technical staff. "Comms" embodies such a large set of problems, some of which can be caused by team programming, some of which cannot.

What "should" be replayed? If the issue is due to a bug in the background SmartDashboard code that can't be fixed by the team at the event, does it warrant a replay? Do they keep replaying until they get lucky and all teams have a good match? There is a lot of code that is used on the robot and the DS that teams don't have any control over which may contain bugs that get triggered by certain events. If a team's code triggers one of these bugs, whose fault is it?

T16 only allows for replays due to ARENA faults, which includes physical field failures and FMS issues but not FIRST supplied code templates on the robots and driver stations, which are not considered part of the FMS according to the FMS whitepaper. Any issues between the DS and the ROBOT, at present, are not specifically allowed for under T16.

I think that a more explicit guide to comms issues would be very helpful. Not every problem is known or common right now, but if the Referees and FTA's can tell a team "We know it's none one of A/B/C issues, check your DS logs and see if any of X/Y/Z is happening", and the results of that guides whether or not a replay is warranted. Teams will understand and respect the decision to replay or not a lot more if it is explained why it is or is not a problem that is their fault and that they can fix.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

Certainly a true field fault (ie, Roomba stuck under the bridge) is always cause for a replay

I wish they would have let us try to complete the triple balance anyhow. We were half way there