Why does everyone hate this game so much?

[George Nishimura]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

This year the big thing woulda been the penalty points as compared to the match scores. Even our no defense analysis showed that a 50 point penalty would be massive. Factoring in that defense can usually halve optimal that 50 point tech foul was high on our list of "things to avoid" (I think it was shortly behind 'ejecting the battery').

Coupling the difficulty in scoring (as compared to years like 2008/2012 where teams could score points merely by being mobile) with high foul points should have been able to show the GDC that a disproportionate number of matches would be decided by fouls even at high levels of play. [insert Ether here to back up the exact number or elim matches decided by fouls]

The tricky thing with analysing the foul points is coupling the intent with the value. G40 is intended to scare people from ever putting their hands in danger (My personal grievance is that the human player zones have a back line - ie they are too small).

For the other TFs, I think some of them are out of whack on purpose. G14, TFG27, updated G28 are about ethical retribution/scare-forcing rather than balancing out strategic advantages.

"In game justice" is hard in FRC because the games are too short. Ideally there would be a ruleset like Ultimate Frisbee, which is designed to recreate the state of the game before the foul (read: not as a punishment), but in FRC that's near impossible. Using points, the penalty points, on average, have to make up the points lost because of the foul. But that often means situations are either under-penalised or over-penalised.

Take, for example, trying to determine an appropriate foul point for tipping. A team that is tipped loses the alliance some amount of points depending on the capabilities of the robot and the state of the game (namely, time left). How is it possible to derive one point value to cover all cases? This is why ridiculous "20 pt + 3rd level hang" foul happened last year for interfering with only 10pt hangs.

The consequence is a choice between more subjective refeereeing (yay!), less rules (battlebots!) or purposely high penalty values to scare teams from accidentally or intentionally committing the foul (50pts!).

But just to be clear - I think that your analysis (and all of TwentyFour) is great and useful and more publishing of this type of analysis and deconstruction would really help the community and the GDC.