paper: Spanking the Children

[Jim Giacchi]

I agree with this paper and have a couple of things to add.

Number one complaint is that I don't even understand why you are all talking about this.... everybody who has been in FIRST remembers that they eliminated penalties in a big Kickoff webcast presentation. Dean said there will be no more penalties....
For those of you who don't remember what I am referring to, At kickoff in 2012?maybe...(Help an old man's memory out someone, all the years blur together). they came out and announced, no more penalties! Cheering and excultation commenced, till we read the rules and figured out that all they had done was changed penalty to foul.... and the end result was FIRST reconized that penalties were killing the game and then proceeded to fix the problem by smoke, mirrors, and completely ignoring the problem existed.

Honestly I may be a but more jaded, but just eliminate penalties for anything other then destroying (intentionally) another robot. Let the robots play the game, it will be a LOT simpler and more fun to watch. If you need fouls to keep a game fair, you are doing it wrong.

Oh and bumpers are silly, build a frame for contact, if it breaks, you did not build it strong enough. I was opposed to them when they first came out and I have never grown fond of them, especially since they are a pain to make. Frankly, I miss the nice crunch sounds from before bumpers. (I've been doing this since 2000)
Jim

[dtengineering]

Originally Posted by Jim Giacchi

....
Oh and bumpers are silly, build a frame for contact, if it breaks, you did not build it strong enough. I was opposed to them when they first came out and I have never grown fond of them, especially since they are a pain to make. Frankly, I miss the nice crunch sounds from before bumpers. (I've been doing this since 2000)
Jim

I agree with the need to build a strong frame. But I haven't been able to convince the school board to build hallway walls strong enough to handle robot impacts. Bumpers to me have always been about protecting the world from the robot, rather than the robot from the world. (They also do a great job of eliminating "wedge-bots".)

But if you really like the sound of crunching metal, here's a great off-season event to get away from all those silly penalties and bumpers! http://www.botsiq.org/manage.aboutbbiq.php

Jason

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

I agree with the need to build a strong frame. But I haven't been able to convince the school board to build hallway walls strong enough to handle robot impacts. Bumpers to me have always been about protecting the world from the robot, rather than the robot from the world. (They also do a great job of eliminating "wedge-bots".)

But if you really like the sound of crunching metal, here's a great off-season event to get away from all those silly penalties and bumpers! http://www.botsiq.org/manage.aboutbbiq.php

Jason

Bumpers have always been about protecting the field from the robots. With the increase in power fields were getting pretty beat up. Still do to an extent (see 125 running our intake underneath the diamond plate at RI after a hit)