paper: The Penalties will continue until Morale Improves

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

I have always felt that the core problem with this entire topic is a volume thing. FIRST keeps adding rules in an attempt to control gameplay. As a result, the refs are overburdened watching trivial things with black and white definitions and not properly policing the grey areas of robot interaction with their full attention. Your perspective seems to reflect this same observation.

This is what happens when Engineers try to design a sport. Engineering is all about strict rules and controls, sports are all about fair play, motivation, balance. There are lots of grey areas in sports, and this is why we need refs. Not for black and white, we need them most for the grey.

If you are a runner in baseball and you get hit with a ball, are you out or are you safe? It depends where the ball came from. Refs decide.

If your opponent's ball lands in your machine in Aerial Assist, do you get a penalty? Yes, always, even with the rules modifications. Fail. It should depend on where it came from. If an opponents rebound lands in your robot, why is this your team's fault?

All rules in an interactive game MUST have situational dependency. This is what the refs should watch, not the HPs finger tips.

That's true to a point, but I think it's possible to swing it too far in the direction you propose. Add too many situational dependencies, too many judgments of intent, and you end up with something like a boxing score, where it's often impossible to discern what the judges were thinking. Every difficult judgment presents an opportunity for inconsistency, and FIRST competitors are certainly quick to decry inconsistent officiation.

Maybe the real issue with the ball possession penalty is that it could have been disincentivized rather than penalized. Penalties imply an infraction, and the conversation is naturally about equity: who was wronged? Disincentives don't have to be about that at all. It could simply have been a feature of the game that if an opponent's ball lands in your robot, for any reason at all, you lose some points—and get to control that ball for a while.¹ Teams will have no reason to feel wronged (as they do now), and will instead develop designs and strategies to avoid that situation. What's more, it would be easy for the referees to judge.

You're certainly right that too much of the referees' attention is devoted to trivialities.

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

FIRST likes rules. They have lots of rules about how to build robots, lots of rules about how to make bumpers, lots of rules about when you can work on your robot, lots of rules about how to get penalties on the field; rules, rules, rules, rules, rules. I think on this topic, less is more in every category. Most of these rules add little actual value and just make everything more difficult for all of us.

Definitely true, and definitely something that they need to address. The rules should be as exact as possible where precision adds value, and as lenient as possible where a general constraint would satisfy the rulemakers' intent.

The rules for bumpers and pneumatics have awful return on investment, and are long overdue for an overhaul.

¹ Obviously this would have to be studied in the context of the game as a whole, because it might lead to certain strategies dominating. I don't propose it as a hypothetical remedy for Aerial Assist, but merely offer it as an example of a different way of managing gameplay behaviour.