Fouls that "Didn't Affect the Outcome of the Match"

[Michael Hill]

I'd like to see more of a penalty box type penalty. Regular foul: disable for 10 seconds. Technical foul: disable for 1 minute.

(Or something like that)

[billylo]

initiated a new poll to solicit the communities' thought on how 2015's point system should be.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=129424

Cheers.

[XaulZan11]

FIRST and the GDC has received a lot of heat over this year's game in regards to the penalties. In reality, I'm not really sure these discussions and debates are anything new. Here is a thread from just about 6 years ago. Pretty interesting thread to skim through and see how the FIRST community changes or doesn't change.

(On a related note, FIRST has received a lot of credit for being more open and transparent. 6 years ago we had members of the GDC posting about the GDC. Frank is still my hero, though!)

[dmaciel10123]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

I'd like to see more of a penalty box type penalty. Regular foul: disable for 10 seconds. Technical foul: disable for 1 minute.

(Or something like that)

The problem with this becomes robots becoming obstacles and in the case of this year's game, dead balls out the wazoo. Not to mention that simply being disabled for a period of time is not equivalent to boosting the score to that of what it may be had the foul not occurred.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

Most refs can decide if something was a foul or not. But what about that sliding scale - was it a foul or a tech foul? - for those many infractions we had this year where both penalties were possible. Would you rather the ref entered the tech foul and it was downgraded after talking to the head ref, or enter the foul and it was upgraded later?

For myself: as a coach, I always want as much as much potentially relevant information available to me as possible (when/whether I process it and what I do with it will depend on my in-situ resolution of "potential"). As a ref, I don't like pretending to be sure of something I'm not. As such, my perfect world is: no call, possible foul, foul, possible T foul, T foul. I'm not sure yet whether I could handle this as a ref without slipping in other areas, but in terms of "would you rather", it'd be that. Maybe I'll try at some off-seasons. As far as entering, I don't care as long as it's standardized (i.e. always the higher option or always the lower option).

Originally Posted by BrendanM

I wholeheartedly agree with everything said on this thread. At the same time I would also like to point out how incredibly difficult it would be to count fouls as they occur in a match. As others have said; the refs had a huge amount of work to do for the 2014 games. There were rules that called for subjective decisions and others that needed a lot of situational attention. If there was even more to give the refs their penalty accuracy would drop tremendously. For example: at one of the competitions my team went to, there was a last second 40 point shot that changed the outcome of the game. Great, whatever. But they forgot to count it. It took about 45 minutes just for the refs to agree on weather or not it actually happened. Point is, there's only so much detail that can go into score counting as the game is being played.

I'm not sure what you mean by "count fouls as they occur in a match". We do our best to call and enter [change score to reflect] fouls in-match, but the software is doing any counting. Please elaborate?

Welcome to CD!

Originally Posted by dmaciel10123

...Not to mention that simply being disabled for a period of time is not equivalent to boosting the score to that of what it may be had the foul not occurred.

Not a big sports fan: is this actually the aim of fouls in other sports? I can't think of a sport that gives free points as fouls, it seems like it's always some kind of extra opportunity. I'm thinking about like yardage in football, free throws in basketball, penalty shots/kicks in hockey and soccer, though I don't know the nuances of any of them.

[dmaciel10123]

I see it as aim to provide intent to not commit a foul. In a match where there are two strong robots that can carry the match without the third, then the third could commit a foul and be disabled while providing no relevant advantage to the other team.

[Justin Montois]

Originally Posted by Carol

Let me ask a theoretical question. If a ref sees an action which could be a foul, but they need to check with the HR or another ref who had a better sight angle, would you, as a team member, prefer the ref to immediately enter the foul, only to delete it after the match if it was incorrect, or not to enter the foul, and add it after the match after checking?

Yes, in a perfect worlds all fouls are immediately caught and interpreted correctly, but we don't live in a perfect world with professional referees.

Our student was told by the Chief Referee that "referees can only call what they see."

To answer your question, if the referee doesn't feel confident that the call was a foul, and the referee who had a better view also didn't call a foul then it probably wasn't a foul. Call it the way you see it at the time. Nobody expects different.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

To answer your question, if the referee doesn't feel confident that the call was a foul, and the referee who had a better view also didn't call a foul then it probably wasn't a foul. Call it the way you see it at the time. Nobody expects different.

Or a possession... Had one match where a team kept asking about a particular possession that wasn't awarded. 3 matches, 3 discussions, and 3 ref checks by the head ref later, we told them something to the effect of, "Look, 3 refs were watching your alliance's robot from at least two different angles. NONE of them thought you had that possession. Sorry, but that's not a possession." As I recall, having the extra 10 points wouldn't have changed the outcome of the match, particularly with an incidental G12 the questioning team had picked up along the way.


That's really all you can do with foul and possession calls: Call it like you see it, and verify you got it right after the match if you think you need to.