Week 1 Analysis

[apples000]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Other entirely viable strategies may include:

-Assists being attributed within the same century they occur
-The pedestals lighting up prior to the heat death of the universe
-Dead Ball cards being enforced better than an anti-robbery police unit in the Old West
-Real time scoring functioning better than square wheels

At what point would FIRST decide to make changes to rules that may affect strategies of a very select few in order to better administer the game they designed? I can't answer that question.

This is the best post I've read all week.

The game is, IMO, broken because of the overused penalties, delayed scoring, incorrect scoring, lack of rule knowledge by referees, 2003-style defense gameplay and obscure field issues. Anything they can do to make the game "less broken" is good.

There's weird field stuff happening too. I've watched goofy timing display stuff on the webcasts, as well as delays between when a ball is scored and the assist lights go off and pedestal lights go on. Also, I've seen a few more timing issues with the hot goals (8 seconds left, 2 seconds right). Does anybody know how they're scoring these?

[piersklein]

All this hype over aggressive defense this year is astounding. How did so many teams not anticipate this aspect of the game? This is especially important when some teams build weighted chassis battering rams as robots. I know my team wont have a problem, our entire robot is double extrusion and welded steel

[orangemoore]

Originally Posted by piersklein

All this hype over aggressive defense this year is astounding. How did so many teams not anticipate this aspect of the game? This is especially important when some teams build weighted chassis battering rams as robots. I know my team wont have a problem, our entire robot is double extrusion and welded steel

I know that my team took a look at the game and saw that defense was going to be important but, the amount of defense and harshness was completely unexpected. I did not foresee many robot running almost full speed at each other as the main form of defense that there would be.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

I know that my team took a look at the game and saw that defense was going to be important but, the amount of defense and harshness was completely unexpected.

Not by anybody I talked to. Maybe this is a matter of experience, but wide open field + no safe zones = insane collisions.

[Sparky3D]

Originally Posted by piersklein

All this hype over aggressive defense this year is astounding. How did so many teams not anticipate this aspect of the game? This is especially important when some teams build weighted chassis battering rams as robots. I know my team wont have a problem, our entire robot is double extrusion and welded steel

I was expecting a ton of defense, but I was expecting "typical" FRC defense: getting rammed by an opponent's bumpers, an opponent getting in the way/pushing you around, opponents using arms to block/deflect shots. What I wasn't expecting was teams using their intakes as battering rams and hitting an opponent at high speed with them to try to dislodge a ball (without fouls being called), or 5 robots being tipped over during 3 finals matches. There is a difference between rough and violent, and some of the matches are really starting to push that line.

[Racer26]

I didn't see any robots tipped at GTRW, despite 1310 coming close a couple of times. I would guess that this is an artifact of the game generating mostly low-CG designs.

[Craig Roys]

Originally Posted by piersklein

All this hype over aggressive defense this year is astounding. How did so many teams not anticipate this aspect of the game? This is especially important when some teams build weighted chassis battering rams as robots. I know my team wont have a problem, our entire robot is double extrusion and welded steel

It's not the defense that's the problem. We built our intake arms to be flexible to withstand being hit and we brought lots of spares and built them so they are a relatively easy swap. The problem is the way the game is being called. We expected to get hit and have our intake broken...we did not expect that if we were sitting still to shoot a ball and another team rams into us and breaks our intake (they initiated and caused the contact) that WE would be assessed a 50 pt technical foul for contact in the bumper zone. That's only one of a number of examples of fouls being called on the team being hit (not just our team). I'm not sure why G14 is not being enforced...many penalties I saw were the result of a defending team forcing the offensive team into a penalty.

Just to be clear...I'm not blaming the refs. I agree with the sentiments of many others in that they have WAY too much to try to do to possibly watch everything that's happening. I appreciate the job the refs have to do and I know that they are trying the best they can in a very difficult job this year. Separate scorers would help which would allow the refs to focus more on what the robots are doing. I do think that technical fouls are much too large for the amount they are being called.

[EricH]

Speaking as a ref, on a 6-person crew, at a Week 1 regional:

The crew I was on was in agreement that we had way too much to do. And that the panels for input need an update.

1) The refs are keeping track of possessions, scores (truss, catch, and goal--and miss), cycles, AND fouls by both robots and human players. Odds are, something is going to get overlooked unless it's blatant.
2) Lag, lag, wait for it... lag. On some screens, the panels are fairly quick... but on others, it's a good solid 3-4 seconds. And when ending a cycle, on top of the potential wait for a ball to be good or bad for sure, there's whatever lag is in the system to get the signal to the pedestal to light up.


And... my personal hope is that G40 gets revised to a Foul. Particularly given the severe effects a T-Foul has on the score.