Real IRI Rules Changes?

[Don Wright]

No game rule changes
Kill the Serpentine
No Mentor Match
More than 8 qualification rounds

[Adam Freeman]

Originally Posted by Holtzman

Who wouldn’t want to see Zondag, Freeman, or the Copioli’s at the sticks?

Not all of us are former drivers. I don't want to put my perfect 2-0 record on the line anymore.

I better work on getting my proposal, for bringing alumni back as mentors, approved before IRI.

[KrazyCarl92]

Originally Posted by bardd

Also, most teams have room for five discs or need very little work to allow five discs in their robot, so it barely gives any design an unfair advantage, except for favoring faster shooters, which is not different than the original.

So you're telling me that after we spent 4 months working our hearts out to play Ultimate Ascent to the best of our ability, one of the external constraints that led to our particular design should be altered in a way that makes us less competitive? This happened after 6 weeks with the elimination of the blizzard, so I guess it wouldn't be anything new.

However, the blizzard was taken away due to safety...I fail to see how 5 discs instead of 4 improves the game. The limit of 4 makes it a more difficult engineering challenge to achieve many extra disc autos, which I think is the way it's supposed to be.

[bardd]

Originally Posted by KrazyCarl92

So you're telling me that after we spent 4 months working our hearts out to play Ultimate Ascent to the best of our ability, one of the external constraints that led to our particular design should be altered in a way that makes us less competitive? This happened after 6 weeks with the elimination of the blizzard, so I guess it wouldn't be anything new.

However, the blizzard was taken away due to safety...I fail to see how 5 discs instead of 4 improves the game. The limit of 4 makes it a more difficult engineering challenge to achieve many extra disc autos, which I think is the way it's supposed to be.

If it makes you less competitive, then you're probably an exception. Of all the designs I saw for hoppers only a few can't hold 5 discs, and most of those can be altered to hold 5 in 30 minutes. And I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but if you're going to change a rule, SOMEONE will be hurt by it. That's just the way it goes, since almost every rule leads to opposite designs. I think last year's change was much more significant in that aspect.

I think having more discs in the air will simply make the game more fun to watch. Also, I can't see how the 4 disc limit makes multi-disk auto any harder, since there's no position where you can pick up more than four discs except for the centerline, and that only in some cases. I find it hard to believe that in IRI there will be a match with three robots shooting only two discs in auton.

Another proposal: if you don't like the idea of making the limit higher, how about allowing 4 discs in auton? Just adding a disc per robot (4 for robots that used to hold 3, 3 for those that used to hold 2). This will give us more action in he begining of the match, higher scores, more discs in the air (read more fun to watch), without hurting teams that can't make their robot hold 5 discs.

[Justin Montois]

Might be cool to see the winner of auto mode get 10 bonus discs for use in that match.

[KrazyCarl92]

The difference is that last year's rule change was made in an effort to get rid of a "flaw" in the game design. If you don't agree that it was a flaw, feel free to read about what happened at GTR East last year.

And the limit at 4 makes extra disc autonomous routines more challenging because a robot must release at least one of its 3 discs before it goes to pick up a pair of discs. If the limit is 5 discs, a 9 disc auto becomes a real possibility. I'm honestly surprised nobody ever tried starting with 2 discs from the back of the pyramid and doing an 8 disc auto.

[Tyler Olds]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

Might be cool to see the winner of auto mode get 10 bonus discs for use in that match.

.......and they get to go on defense for the first period! Wait.......

[bardd]

Originally Posted by KrazyCarl92

The difference is that last year's rule change was made in an effort to get rid of a "flaw" in the game design. If you don't agree that it was a flaw, feel free to read about what happened at GTR East last year.

The rule change gave wide drive trains an edge over long ones. I'm not saying it was a bad change, I think it made the game more interesting, but my point was the change I proposed hurts teams with certain designs less than the change made last year.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by bardd

If it makes you less competitive, then you're probably an exception. Of all the designs I saw for hoppers only a few can't hold 5 discs, and most of those can be altered to hold 5 in 30 minutes. And I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but if you're going to change a rule, SOMEONE will be hurt by it. That's just the way it goes, since almost every rule leads to opposite designs. I think last year's change was much more significant in that aspect.

I think having more discs in the air will simply make the game more fun to watch. Also, I can't see how the 4 disc limit makes multi-disk auto any harder, since there's no position where you can pick up more than four discs except for the centerline, and that only in some cases. I find it hard to believe that in IRI there will be a match with three robots shooting only two discs in auton.

Another proposal: if you don't like the idea of making the limit higher, how about allowing 4 discs in auton? Just adding a disc per robot (4 for robots that used to hold 3, 3 for those that used to hold 2). This will give us more action in he begining of the match, higher scores, more discs in the air (read more fun to watch), without hurting teams that can't make their robot hold 5 discs.

I can tell you right now that it is absolutely impossible to load 5 discs into our robot and that cannot be altered. Not in 5 minutes, not in 5 hours, probably not at all due to the tight fit between our hopper and climber.

While yes I agree it would be cool to see more discs flying and higher scores, the 4 disc limit is a pretty big design constraint this season for teams to work with. Last year pretty much every team could hold more than the legal limit so saying teams could hold 4 balls wouldn't have been a problem but this season most teams are maxed out at 4 discs.

Starting with 4 in autonomous would be cool! I also like putting 4 on the center line. Makes the mad dash to the middle even more important! Or spin off of that put 6 on the center line but don't put them all next to each other. Put two in the middle and the other four xx feet away from the center line so two-three teams can grab from the center line in auto. Now that would be interesting!

[coalhot]

One thing to think about is that even if the Frisbee blizzard was brought back, many of the teams at IRI would not have Frisbees left for the HP's to throw. Between super accurate FCS and very efficient cyclers, I'd be surprised if there were more than 15 Frisbees left in the feeder station at the end of a match with a good alliance.

I'll be watching IRI. It's gonna be good...

[JB987]

Originally Posted by Chris Fultz

"Real IRI Rule Changes?" - do you mean in addition to the co-opertition pyramid?

Any changes will be announced before teams have to commit to attend and then they can decide if they want to play under the rule changes - if any.

Please note that any changes would be tweaks to rules, not significant changes to how the game was played during the season.

By "real" rule changes I mean ones that were not generated on April Fools Day

[HumblePie]

Here's a suggestion:

Obtain enough yellow frisbees to load all robots for autonomous and populate the floor. All yellow disks scored will be worth the autonomous value, during autonomous, or after. This has the added benefit of making the manual scoring audit easier once the match is complete.

Might make for some interesting battles between floor pickup robots.

[pathew100]

Originally Posted by Don Wright

No game rule changes
Kill the Serpentine
No Mentor Match
More than 8 qualification rounds

+1. Sounds good to me.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Holtzman

I personally thought this year’s game is perfect the way it is. I don't think they should change anything.
One thing that I'd personally like to see come back to IRI is the Mentor Match. And I'm not talking about the hokey lunch time tournament.
Up until 2007, teams used to play 1 qualifying match where mentors drove, and students coached. The match counted like any other qualifying match, and was a lot of fun to watch. There were some rules about eligibility to drive and many teams recruited mentors from other teams if they were shorthanded. Where it got messy was if the number of teams in attendance wasn't divisible by 6. Then you had some teams playing with mentors, and others playing with student drivers. It wasn’t perfect, but it sure was a lot of fun.

Who wouldn’t want to see Zondag, Freeman, or the Copioli’s at the sticks?

+2

If we all expect IRI to be the pinnacle of FRC competition, how can we accurately measure its greatness against MSC, Einstein, Divisional Finals, etc. if the rules are drastically modified in any way relative to how the game was played during the regular season?

Even the addition of more ammo would make it much harder to compare the events' relative greatness.

In a year when it is generally agreed that not much was wrong with the game design, let's leave well enough alone.

[JB987]

+3