Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better

[sircedric4]

Originally Posted by jmcrawford45

The original post was redacted so I will remove the copy here. :-)

I have never claimed that we were biased against, just that to an outside observer it may appear that way because the penalties were not showing up real time. Further review of our Regional Finals match on the drive home showed the penalties that we incurred were legitimate penalties. Our disappointment is not with the Arkansas Regional, its personnel, venue, or other teams at the event. We had a wonderful time and wish the winning alliance all the best in their future games and at World Championship. They won the games playing with the same rules we played to.

Our beef is with the harsh and subjective penalties associated with the game Aerial Assist. Being on the field is a high stress environment for anyone much less over-stressed refs and high school students. Mistakes are easily made, and having so many penalties in the game, and making them worth so much is our issue. An inconsequential mistake that happens to be observed at that time can cost a team their game. That is why I agree with this petition that the technical fouls should be lowered, changed, or the safety zone improved to decrease the likelihood of bad feelings about this game.

[jmcrawford45]

Originally Posted by sircedric4

Our beef is with the harsh and subjective penalties associated with the game Aerial Assist. Being on the field is a high stress environment for anyone much less over-stressed refs and high school students. Mistakes are easily made, and having so many penalties in the game, and making them worth so much is our issue. An inconsequential mistake that happens to be observed at that time can cost a team their game. That is why I agree with this petition that the technical fouls should be lowered, changed, or the safety zone improved to decrease the likelihood of bad feelings about this game.

I want to apologize to you for associating you with my above post, as it was entirely out of line both for FIRST and this site. At the time, I was still bitter about a game and regional that was entirely different than what I expected it to be. The mountain of foul points awarded after matches and the field issues in this year's game makes it easy for someone as stubborn as I to say "it's the field team's fault" or "this was rigged." When it's all said and done, the alliance that best played the game and adhered to the rules advanced from the Arkansas Regional. The personnel at the Arkansas Regional worked hard to provide a game that was a lot of fun. I deeply regret this post and would like to ask that it not be associated by the reader with my team.

[Swan217]

Just to add statistical fuel to the fire, 11% of matches in week 1 were "overturned" by fouls (Alliance w' more points lost). 11% of week 2 matches were also overturned by fouls. If you have 19 matches (including elims), odds are at least 2 of them will be decided by penalty points.

[Travis Hoffman]

Regardless of point value or when they are entered into the system, call the fouls consistently. When something is a foul one match and the exact same something isn't called the next, it's incredibly aggravating, and no amount of "they are just overworked volunteers", "it's the FMS", etc. is going to make teams quiet down. Teams should voice their concerns even LOUDER until the GDC acts and the game is restored to some semblance of consistency.

Most MLB teams can live with an umpire who sucks at calling balls and strikes equally for both teams. But if you get inconsistent calls that favor one team over the others, watch the sparks fly.

[Michael Corsetto]

My drive team has two coaches. Our Drive Coach and Our HP Coach. Our HP Coach is responsible for training every other HP we are with in Quals. Every match. Pre-match, she will take the HP's aside with a ball and show them how to the throw a ball into the field or into their robot. Every match. And almost every match, she tells me just how little HP's know about the rules and the game. This isn't new, often HP's don't know what is going on. What is new is their ability to literally throw away matches with the wave of their hand. We went 19 matches without a G40 at IE, but odds are our luck will run out soon...

This is a problem. FIRST, please fix it.

-Mike

[Meredith Novak]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

My drive team has two coaches. Our Drive Coach and Our HP Coach. Our HP Coach is responsible for training every other HP we are with in Quals. Every match. Pre-match, she will take the HP's aside with a ball and show them how to the throw a ball into the field or into their robot. Every match. And almost every match, she tells me just how little HP's know about the rules and the game. This isn't new, often HP's don't know what is going on. What is new is their ability to literally throw away matches with the wave of their hand. We went 19 matches without a G40 at IE, but odds are our luck will run out soon...

This is a problem. FIRST, please fix it.

-Mike

We stressed this as well at Arkansas and FRC 16 human players were coaching others at the practice field. They did pretty well avoiding the penalties in the qualification matches, but the stress of finals is tough and they began getting careless; especially the less experienced teams.

[PayneTrain]

The foul points are not the problem, were not the problem, and will never be the problem. The problems are the same you run into every year, but more obvious than before by more people.

-Teams are not adequately prepared for game elements that have remained unchanged since day 1 of build season. This is an open field game with two total scoring objects. Anyone who has bothered to understand FRC or any other game could have pointed out the potential for heavy defense that may be hard to judge. You had 6 weeks to design for it. The "battle scars" happen every year, but a few people seem to have decided that this year it is easy to blame the game for being different from recent affairs than to blame inadequate preparation. When 422 broke our drivetrain, we went back and said "how can we redesign this so it is more robust?" We didn't ask "how many petitions do we have to start on Chief Delphi to change the game to suit us?" You had practice day at your events to work with your human player under the new rule. Whether or not the "safety zone" ruling is ideal or not, there is a way the human player can function in his/her box and have zero to no fouls ever occur. I made it a point to make sure the human player on our team never fouled. We worked with other alliance partners who had some real all star human players to refine the technique we used. if you wanted more clarification, you had the driver meeting, practice day, and the question box to voice concerns and ask questions about G40. There were as many teams at Alamo that never committed a foul on G40 as there were that committed multiple violations of it. Everybody gets the same manual. Everybody has access to the same team updates. Read them. Know them. Love them.

-Teams are not adequately prepared for alliance partners to have no idea what they are doing. This is a problem that is made much more significant by the way the game is played this year. Great teams and good teams will lose matches because their alliance partners will misrepresent, underperform, be ignorant of rules, have unforseen issues, lack basic understanding of the game... the list of fun goes on and on. With only one game piece this year, this should have been anticipated and adjusted to. Not to mention, changing foul points wouldn't do much. So an alliance partner violates G40. It will affect your ranking, which is unfortunate, but you playing your game is good enough for scout teams. If you have an alliance partner in eliminations that commits a technical foul, that is ENTIRELY on the alliance itself, with an exception for all rulings that I am about to get to.

Even though everyone has been conditioned to target, complain, and in return, receive hivemind karma from the annual Greater Toronto East Regional thread and drama factory, even 1114 representatives said that the fouls were the alliance's burden. So what if an opposing ball lands in your robot? For once, FIRST made it very clear that that kind of motion will be called as a technical foul every time, they made it clear that they will not change the intent of the rule, and stressed to teams that it was imortant to design around that situation not happening if you want to avoid the foul. If I lost a match on that foul I wouldn't necessarily be happy about it, but I wouldn't go full rage against the machine over it either--the rule has been clear for a while.

-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. While pinning is a very easy foul to call (much like a false start in football) some things like opponent possesion via repeated taps of the ball, exactly how to call G28 violations, etc., are far more subjective issues (subjective like judging at the 3000 winter Olympic events that are judged). The lack of concreteness to work with results in inconsistent calls. While the referee is consulting the angel and devil on their shoulder about a violation of G12, they could miss a G40 happening right next to them, while a G28 is almost certainly occuring at midfield, 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?

Foul points aren't the issue. It's the teams, the partners, and the calls. The same as it ever was, but now with more obvious ramifications and as a result, more bellyaching over the wrong things.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

The foul points are not the problem, were not the problem, and will never be the problem. The problems are the same you run into every year, but more obvious than before by more people.

-Teams are not adequately prepared for game elements that have remained unchanged since day 1 of build season. This is an open field game with two total scoring objects. Anyone who has bothered to understand FRC or any other game could have pointed out the potential for heavy defense that may be hard to judge. You had 6 weeks to design for it. The "battle scars" happen every year, but a few people seem to have decided that this year it is easy to blame the game for being different from recent affairs than to blame inadequate preparation. When 422 broke our drivetrain, we went back and said "how can we redesign this so it is more robust?" We didn't ask "how many petitions do we have to start on Chief Delphi to change the game to suit us?" You had practice day at your events to work with your human player under the new rule. Whether or not the "safety zone" ruling is ideal or not, there is a way the human player can function in his/her box and have zero to no fouls ever occur. I made it a point to make sure the human player on our team never fouled. We worked with other alliance partners who had some real all star human players to refine the technique we used. if you wanted more clarification, you had the driver meeting, practice day, and the question box to voice concerns and ask questions about G40. There were as many teams at Alamo that never committed a foul on G40 as there were that committed multiple violations of it. Everybody gets the same manual. Everybody has access to the same team updates. Read them. Know them. Love them.

-Teams are not adequately prepared for alliance partners to have no idea what they are doing. This is a problem that is made much more significant by the way the game is played this year. Great teams and good teams will lose matches because their alliance partners will misrepresent, underperform, be ignorant of rules, have unforseen issues, lack basic understanding of the game... the list of fun goes on and on. With only one game piece this year, this should have been anticipated and adjusted to. Not to mention, changing foul points wouldn't do much. So an alliance partner violates G40. It will affect your ranking, which is unfortunate, but you playing your game is good enough for scout teams. If you have an alliance partner in eliminations that commits a technical foul, that is ENTIRELY on the alliance itself, with an exception for all rulings that I am about to get to.

Even though everyone has been conditioned to target, complain, and in return, receive hivemind karma from the annual Greater Toronto East Regional thread and drama factory, even 1114 representatives said that the fouls were the alliance's burden. So what if an opposing ball lands in your robot? For once, FIRST made it very clear that that kind of motion will be called as a technical foul every time, they made it clear that they will not change the intent of the rule, and stressed to teams that it was imortant to design around that situation not happening if you want to avoid the foul. If I lost a match on that foul I wouldn't necessarily be happy about it, but I wouldn't go full rage against the machine over it either--the rule has been clear for a while.

-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. While pinning is a very easy foul to call (much like a false start in football) some things like opponent possesion via repeated taps of the ball, exactly how to call G28 violations, etc., are far more subjective issues (subjective like judging at the 3000 winter Olympic events that are judged). The lack of concreteness to work with results in inconsistent calls. While the referee is consulting the angel and devil on their shoulder about a violation of G12, they could miss a G40 happening right next to them, while a G28 is almost certainly occuring at midfield, 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?

Foul points aren't the issue. It's the teams, the partners, and the calls. The same as it ever was, but now with more obvious ramifications and as a result, more bellyaching over the wrong things.

That's pretty much how I see it as well. While I recognize the potential utility of regulatory changes to compensate for undesirable conditions, I don't think that's a good resolution in this case.

First of all, we're not talking about matters of law that have far-reaching and severe consequences; we're talking about a game that everyone is playing because they want to, knowing that the game has a set of rules that are intended to apply to the exact situations at issue.

Also, it's not clear that there's even a truly equitable resolution here. Might it not be worse, overall, if the first two weeks were played with a fundamentally different set of strategic tradeoffs and enforcement priorities? What does that do for teams' expectations in the long term? Is it fair to the teams who designed to the original set of rules? Or who played during the first two weeks and won't have a chance to play again?

[TheMadCADer]

A lot of people seem to be hung up on the safety factor of the human players, but I don't think that's a valid argument for keeping the foul, I'd say its more of an argument against using humans. This is a robotics competition.

What I think the GDC should have done was make every team build an inbounding robot along with their normally fielded robot. At the times where the pedestal is dark in the game as-designed the inbound robot is disabled and the human player pre-loads it with a ball. When it is enabled you have a single button (built in, right next to the E-stop) to initiate a preprogrammed inbound action, then the inbounder is disabled once the ball is back in play (when a ref enters the first assist). To ensure the inbounding robot cannot activate while being pre-loaded, only the human player can push this button. Inbound robots would be allowed to freely extend into the field and touch alliance robots.

Ambitious teams could build inbound robots capable of catching and place them down field to do the popular truss catch routine that currently uses a human player. This could earn a small point bonus (say, 5 points to an inbound robot and 15 for a normal catch). Inbound robots placed down field would be enabled at all times and would allow for the human player to act as a third driver with inputs limited only by the current operator console space limits. These robots would be roped off with a safety barrier during the match. If no inbounder is placed down field and in all other cases, balls that exit the field will be thrown back into play with reckless abandon by field reset crew members at a significant distance from the field. If you want to keep control of your ball, then keep control of your ball.

The six week build period is busy enough without an extra robot to design and build. As such, inbound robots would not be bagged and are not subject to withholding allowance rules.

[FrankJ]

Things have actually improved. Those "more experienced" teams should remember LOGOMOTION. Fouls for touching things in the middle of the field.

First had to issue a special update that you could not use a foul strategy to win.

Warning: Previous years rules have nothing to do with this years game.
From Logomotion update 16

It has come to our attention that some TEAMS have concluded a ‘one move win’ is possible under the
following scenario:
A blue ALLIANCE ROBOT is in the blue ZONE. A second blue ALLIANCE ROBOT is outside the ZONE, but in the general vicinity. A ROBOT from the red ALLIANCE, exiting its LANE, crosses near the second blue alliance ROBOT . The second blue ALLIANCE ROBOT intentionally pushes the red ALLIANCE ROBOT in to the blue ZONE. The red ALLIANCE ROBOT contacts the first blue ALLIANCE ROBOT. This would result normally result in a YELLOW CARD for the second blue ALLIANCE ROBOT and a RED CARD for the red ALLIANCE ROBOT per Rule <G32>. However, if this were to occur during an elimination match, this would result in the entire red ALLIANCE being disqualified per Rule <T13>, and a ‘one move win’ by the blue ALLIANCE. Referees will be instructed that an attempt to win a MATCH in this way, by the blue ALLIANCE in the scenario above, would be considered particularly egregious behavior under Rule <T09>, resulting in a RED CARD for the blue robot and thus a disqualification of the entire blue ALLIANCE under Rule <T13>. As any attempt at this behavior would necessarily precede contact, in the scenario above, of the red ALLIANCE ROBOT with the blue ALLIANCE ROBOT in the blue ZONE, the blue ALLIANCE disqualification would take precedence over the red ALLIANCE disqualification, and the red ALLIANCE will be declared the winner of the MATCH.