How can you help GDC make this game better?

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

It must be emphasized to every single ref during training that one robot cannot force another to take a penalty. This has long been a core tenet of FIRST except in very special cases. Being pushed into goals, into opposition balls, and out of field perimeter by another robot should not be a foul.

In addition, the rule regarding penetration inside the bumper perimeter needs to be enforced correctly. Damage needs to occur, or it needs to be clearly intentional to generate a foul.

This is an exceptionally good point. A few times at events I've seen, BLUEBOT would get a possession foul (for 'trapping' or 'herding' the red ball), when REDBOT was in fact pinning them to the red ball.

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

G12 needs two penalty levels. I can understand a 50 point penalty if a robot picks up an opponents ball, but contact with the ball that is marginal should be a smaller penalty.

^This would fix that.

Similarly, low goal incursions and extending outside the field perimeter when being pinned to the goal/wall by the opposite alliance happened quite often, and sometimes the G14 violator was not penalized, and the incursion/field perimeter foul was assessed instead.

G14

Strategies aimed solely at forcing the opposing ALLIANCE to violate a rule are not in the spirit of FRC and are not allowed. Rule violations forced in this manner will not result in assessment of a penalty on the target ALLIANCE.

Violation: TECHNICAL FOUL

I think the suggestions about scorekeepers separately from refs is a great one, because it could let the refs focus on the interactions between robots. Several inside-frame-perimeter violations went unpenalized, even when they caused damage, simply because the referees 'didn't see it happen'. If there were a scorekeeper watching the ball instead, the ref would have been able to see the robot interaction. I think it would seriously improve people's impressions of the game if there were scorekeepers dedicated to the ball/assist/scoring/pedestal tracking and the refs could focus on the robots. (This would also help with the scorekeeping errors that are being pointed out in this thread - 125 points scored vs 66 recorded is a BIG problem.)

Originally Posted by Karthik

I'm going to be short and to the point here.

1. Scale back the value of the penalties. The scaling of penalties is completely out of whack when compared to the point scoring potential for an alliance. This is causing penalties to have an overwhelming impact on matches.

2. Allow for certain rule infractions to merely generate a warning for inconsequential actions. The warning will serve as a deterrent, and the match is not unnecessarily affected by an action which did not impact the result. If a team repeatedly performs the same infraction, issue an penalty. This would be similar to a yellow/red card system, but applied to fouls. Actually the better analogy is basketball where you're allowed to commit a certain number of fouls that don't affect a shot, before your opponent is awarded free throws.

Spot on. I've got nothing to say except 'seconded'.