Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better

[BBray_T1296]

Originally Posted by animenerdjohn

G40 is the equivalent of an offsides in football giving 7 points to the other team.

Would you even consider scoring in football to be a good indicator of performance at that point?

The intent of the rule is so people don't get their arm ripped off when they get snagged by a robot intake

It is hard to say that a similar hazard exists from an off sides in football

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by BBray_T1296

The intent of the rule is so people don't get their arm ripped off when they get snagged by a robot intake

It is hard to say that a similar hazard exists from an off sides in football

That's a bit of an exaggeration. Teams/students are consistently around operating robots on the practice and learning to work safely near machines is part of being on an FRC team. The rule could be "don't get your hand/arm near a robot and don't leave in the field for too long" and it would be much more enforceable and just as safe. If you've been in FRC for any reasonable length of time you have probably been hit by a robot and you probably weren't injured. I am all for safety but 50 points for pointing too enthusiastically with no robots around is extreme.

Again the rules are the way they are written this year, but they should be looked at closely and drastically improved in future years.

[scaryone]

No,
learn the rules, understand the system, deal with it like everyone else has to. BTW not trying to sound coarse.

[Foster]

Originally Posted by scaryone

Learn the rules, understand the system, deal with it like everyone else has to.

he GDC addressed the "pinkie" problem with their update last week. Students who grudgingly accept that they can lose a game by putting their hand in the arena, and thus will try to avoid the penalty (and the wrath of their alliance partners) are students who are NOT losing an arm to a fast-moving machine.

I work at a major chemical company. Safety is #1. Safety trumps everything. Always.

All we need is one roboteer injured at a match. It may not seem to be obvious but you, the roboteer is the most important thing. I think the penalties are harsh, but I'm not willing to exchange your safety for a better score.

G40 is harsh. Sorry. To be honest, I don't like robot competitions that the "human player" makes a difference. Robot drivers good, interaction in the game, not so much. But the rule is about safety. Deal with it. Or don't put a human player out.

[wlaroche]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

That's a bit of an exaggeration. Teams/students are consistently around operating robots on the practice and learning to work safely near machines is part of being on an FRC team. The rule could be "don't get your hand/arm near a robot and don't leave in the field for too long" and it would be much more enforceable and just as safe. If you've been in FRC for any reasonable length of time you have probably been hit by a robot and you probably weren't injured. I am all for safety but 50 points for pointing too enthusiastically with no robots around is extreme.

Again the rules are the way they are written this year, but they should be looked at closely and drastically improved in future years.

I am not eying to be mean here, but what is to close and what is to long? When things are bashing in front of you time is flying by. Even with the hard rules we referee by we have to make calls on who initiates the contact when both sides are running full tilt at each other.

[Anupam Goli]

There are actions that deserve a tech foul at a full 50 points, like intentionally tipping a team. There are actions that only deserve a 20 pt. foul. Then there are things that could incidentally happen that are getting tech fouls, like accidentally having an opponent ball in your possession, having a finger outside the yellow line, and damaging contact initiated by the team playing defense. Perhaps we should look into adding a third type of foul. The tech foul can be lowered to 30 pts in value, and we can have a "flagrant foul" be worth the full 50 pts.

[joelg236]

Yes. As a human player, I'm much more worried about foul points than I am enjoying the match, making smart decisions or having fun.

Tech fouls are almost equivalent to a DQ for the match (for most teams that aren't powerhouses).

[orangemoore]

Originally Posted by joelg236

Yes. As a human player, I'm much more worried about foul points than I am enjoying the match, making smart decisions or having fun.

Tech fouls are almost equivalent to a DQ for the match (for most teams that aren't powerhouses).

Isn't that the point? Making sure you are paying attention to what you are doing?
It may be excessive, but what you are saying to me is what the fouls are for. If you were not paying attention you could possibly get hurt.

[joelg236]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

Isn't that the point? Making sure you are paying attention to what you are doing?
It may be excessive, but what you are saying to me is what the fouls are for. If you were not paying attention you could possibly get hurt.

I feel like not having the safety zone (what was originally intended) is sufficient, and has absolutely no effect on safety. There's no way anyone would get hurt if there was a clear line neither human nor robot could cross. And even if they could, the buffer zone could just be right at the field barrier.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

Isn't that the point? Making sure you are paying attention to what you are doing?
It may be excessive, but what you are saying to me is what the fouls are for. If you were not paying attention you could possibly get hurt.

I understand your point, but I feel like if FIRST was fully concerned about safety, they wouldn't have allowed teams to intentionally rifle balls out of the field of play to their Human Players as part of normal game strategy. I'm surprised we haven't seen anyone field side get hurt from one of these shots.

[Doc Wu]

I think one of the reasons some penalty values are that high is to prevent them from being made for a strategic reason.

For instance, when an opponent has possession of a ball with three assists in place, a desperate defender might decide it was worth the penalty if it's value were worth less.

Safety and consistency also weigh in. Safety needs to be strongly encouraged. If a human player got a 10 point penalty, they might get a word from their coach. When they get a 50 point penalty, they hear about it from the whole team.

Consistency is not having confusion on which fouls are worth how many points. I know, the scoring system takes care of most of it, but understanding the score in the stands is easier if they are all the same, not various amounts.

In any event, I've seen many penalty-free matches, so it must be working. I don't think changing now that competitions are underway would be appropriate.

[CTHP]

I agree with many who have posted here that the 50 point penalty for a Technical Foul is excessive. It has been a game changer in some spirited matches; game play that was otherwise ruined by such an excessive penalty. And except for repeated cases of premeditated wrong-doing, how is it that one referee can assess this penalty on a team for a single occurrence of a mistake? The rules were written to cover repeated events but unfortunately included so-called 'strategic' (premeditated) events too. Apparently a single referee can read the minds of the drivers and separate innocent legal game play from a strategic, premeditated, intentional foul.

That being said, the 50 point penalty must remain since that is the way the game was designed. You can't change it now because so many others have already been judged and eliminated by it. Better to re-think it for the next season and consider that maybe more than one referee should personally and visually verify it before penalizing a team.

This could be the standard for a Technical Foul (taken directly from G22): "Violation: FOUL. If continuous or repeated violations, TECHNICAL FOUL.".

For a game (Aerial Assist) that depends on ejecting balls into the air with a suggested robot design specification to catch these balls, it seems cRaZy to say that the opponents ball was possessed by an a competitors robot just because it happens to land in their frame/chassis, as suggested by G12. Now if the competing robot drove around for the next 10 seconds with the ball keeping it from the other team, then we have an extended, strategic, maybe even repeated foul situation here but not just because in lands there momentarily. The same goes for balls colliding in mid-air, also described by G12.

In short, the foul is excessive and needs to be reassessed. Also, visual confirmation from more than one referee should be required before assessing such a large penalty. If not enough referees, then maybe a quick post-game examination of video evidence by the judging panel to verify that the single ref saw what he (she) said they saw.

[KalliL]

I believe that SOMETHING needs to be done about these technical fouls. My team just got back from Gull Lake district event, and it was terrible. Just about every match was decided by foul points. My team racked up 100 points in fouls and we honestly didn't do anything to cause the fouls. This was a seriously unfair call, but I'm not going to go into detail on it, but it was completely unfair. Every other match there was 2 or so fouls and it's very hard to recover from them, especially because of this games nature...

[EricH]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

-Other issues in fouls dont necessarily rely in the points they give up, but how the fouls are administered. Referees, to my knowledge, aren't given an extensive, consistent supplement on the vague, subjective rules in the manual.[...] but by the time the tablet is mashed at like a phone during a Flappy Bird session, it's hard ot tell who-hit-who there, and there was probably an assist as well during all of that, and now there's a bumper on the field... see what I mean?

I highly suggest volunteering to referee. I know for a fact that there's a supplement illustrating various concepts--two or three, actually--and "how to call the game". It's pretty extensive over the more common/nasty fouls. And then there's the whole "referees as scorekeepers", which I think I've expressed my opinion on. Be a lot easier if the refs could just call fouls.

Originally Posted by KalliL

My team racked up 100 points in fouls and we honestly didn't do anything to cause the fouls. This was a seriously unfair call, but I'm not going to go into detail on it, but it was completely unfair.

If you racked up 100 points in fouls, you had to have done SOMETHING. For example, maybe your human player took the ball off the pedestal before it was lit and entered it into play? (Or maybe jumped out of his box 5 times?) There are a lot of ways to get a hundred points in fouls, and not all of them are obvious. (Two G40 violations would do it, for another example.)

If every other team was called for the same offense, after committing it in the same way, it's not an unfair call. It's only unfair if it is called differently for one or two teams than for the rest of the teams.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by EricH

I highly suggest volunteering to referee. I know for a fact that there's a supplement illustrating various concepts--two or three, actually--and "how to call the game". It's pretty extensive over the more common/nasty fouls. And then there's the whole "referees as scorekeepers", which I think I've expressed my opinion on. Be a lot easier if the refs could just call fouls.

I'd love to volunteer as a referee and other KV positions as much as possible but this year proved to have too many things going against me to go out and try that stuff. I did figure that referees had a supplement to communicate to them from the GDC what the intents are behind the rules and when a subjective decision needs to make its way into an objective penalty. I'm not really behind referees keeping score this year, but they should be tracking possessions. Scorekeepers can easily track obvious scoring objectives being completed: high/low goal, truss/catch, and dead ball/ended cycle. Referees are almost required to track possessions since a portion of them are judgement calls. Not like that is ideal, but this game makes it difficult to take possession calls away from the referees when awarding them for assists but still have them call fouls for possession of the opponent's ball.