Petition: Lower technical foul values to make this game better

[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.

[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.

[billylo]

Thanks for all the candid and professional commentary here.

Here is our next step:

• Create a simple 3-question opinion collection form for the community. Link is here. This form enables us to look at other alternatives too.

• Many of you have expressed clear preferences on this thread. If you can take 10 seconds to fill out the form, it would be great.

• If you don't mind, please help spread the word to gather thoughts from students/mentors/volunteers who may not read CD regularly.

I have collected 24 feedbacks since last night. 19 Yes (changes required, different types) and 5 No (no changes to existing rules) Will provide summary updates as I progress.

Thanks again for taking the time.

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Disclaimer: this issue has not affected 610 too much one way or the other. We have a relatively experienced group and should be able to handle different types of rules.

However, I really feel for new and old teams who get to play only once a year: 1468 teams (53.0%).. Imagine you are not a regular participant at champs, spent 6 weeks of sweat building a good robot, worked hard to fund raise to play about 10-15 matches; ended up losing important matches because of 50pt G40, G28 or others that are inconsequential, unintentional fouls that have little safety implications? The stats are clear. ONE tech foul would swing the results of 59% of final matches.

It's not too late to prevent FIRST from losing students/mentors who otherwise would have loved this game and continue to love this thing called #omgrobots.

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