Feedback for FIRST on Rules ...

[soap108]

Joe, good thread idea. We'd all forget these things by the time the Feedback Session roles around.

Dave, bookmark this thread.

Sorry if this repeats any previous posts.

At SOAP we tend to focus on the game, scoring, and scoring component aspects of the competition:

1) No Balls. THANKS FIRST FOR THE CHANGE...AGAIN!! Tubes in Torrid Terror and Floppies in Double Trouble were just the breaks we needed after too many seasons of deformed and inconsistant balls. Keep the veterans on their toes!

2) The EP strategy is nice in that I believe it is trying to reduce the division between the traditional "High Scoring Qualifying Round" robots and the "Elimination Round Winning" robots. The rule is trying to make the score in the Elim rounds matter.

Unfortunatly, I think this may fail to produce the desired result because of the game design. Two wins still guarantee victory. And if it turns out that the Killer KOH robots control the match, were destined for 2002 all over.

A more interesting design rule caveat than the "Cannot touch both sides of the inner wall on the ramp/platform" would have been teams may not have a wingspan greater than, say, 8 feet.

As soon as the former statement was made at the Kickoff teams immediately thought, "okay i'll make a 11' 11.5" wingspan and try and control the ramp/hill. 25-50 points is HUGE."

Another more interesting game/design rule caveat may have been: Teams may attach to the HDPE, but not in the first 1:00.

3) Related to #2. Stack Attack still has too heavy a bias toward one aspect of the game - being KOH. It's still too similar to Zone Zeal in that controlling three goals in your goal-zone GUARANTEED a victory. One reply by FIRST on the ilearning board was something like "the goal of this year's game was to build a robot that stacks bins". I hope the stackers win the National comp and prove 90% of us wrong.

One way to have reduced the expected bias toward teams building KOH robots would be to eliminate the Limbo bar, or raise it much higher, so that robots can go under easier, but
robots carring stack could not.

4) Match Scoring Tie Breakers- good move. We can live without tiebreakers. Especially in this year's game, there should be very few ties anyway. The elimination of these also reduces the logic complexity needed in the ScoringFIRST application.

4b) HOWEVER, a tie basically does nothing...in fact it behaves more like a loss for both alliances. That's beacuse of SC14 #2 which considers only the number of Wins, not the percentage.

At least in the NFL a tie is considered 1/2 Win and 1/2 Loss. That affects the Win %. So a Team that is 0-0-10 (0.500) would rank higher than a Team with 1-9-0 (0.100). If ties are allowed going forward, maybe allow for this kind of formula for winning percentage.

5) Team Update #12 brought in a horrible rule. In the event of a Tie after 3 matches in a particular elimination round AND Both Alliances have the same High EP, the tie breaker is: Higher Seeded Team advances. This is unexceptable.

Can you imagine the world series, or the super bowl ending in a tie, and one team gets the victory because they were the higher seed? No way. {aside} Interesting how Bud Selig made a mistake in letting the 2002 MLB All-star game end in a tie. No way this happens in any sport again. FIRST shouldn't either. There must be a champion.

Albeit an extremely hard case to get to, This is no way to decide who advances on, or wins an event. Play a 4th match!! If the concern was the ScoringFIRST application gets too complex to handle dynamic elimination round match-lengths, than what you do is, effectively, replay the third match. Erase the scores from the old #3 and replay.

In soccer, there is a shoot-out. 1 goalie, 1 Kicker. Maybe something can be implemented in the 2004 eliminations to handle ties after X matches. For 2003, maybe it could have been the highest stack created in 30 seconds?

6) The HP has too little a role this year.

6b) The HP pads are probably an expense that could be reduced next year. Hope they're slip-proof. I'm weary about a game feature that invites students to run and hop around near the playing field border in the last 2 seconds of HP mode.

7) Auto mode is nice. Finally the SW Teams have something exciting and very dynamic to work on. 15 seconds is probably too long though. 10 might be better. I think a lot of teams will accomplish their task in 5-6 seconds and sit for the remaining time.

8) Start now to make sure Championships are back to EPCOT, Orlando in 2004 and beyond.

That's all for now.

Regards,
KA-108

[Jason Morrella]

I think threads like this are forgetting one slightly important thing......the game/season has NOT EVEN BEEN PLAYED YET.

Blanket statements like:
"this part of the game won't work, a better solution would have been...", "the game will be dominated by situation X, and a better scoring rule would have been...", and "we must get FIRST back to Epcot in 2004" are nothing more than speculation at this point - does anyone agree?

After all, there may be a reason FIRST holds their team forum AFTER the season - and that's probably so they can get "actual" feedback from teams who have played the game, not how people "guess" the game will be played.

But before the game has even been played and before ANYONE has even witnessed how the Houston Championship may work?
Many of the guesses made on this thread will end up being accurate - we all know that. But many will not - let's just wait and see how everything plays out and THEN give our thoughts on what was bad and (maybe, just maybe...don't laugh....) what was good about the game. FIRST listened to team input more than ever this off season, and they intend to do so again - they are very genuine about including teams to improve the program each year.

Not to slam this thread - it is a very valuable and necessary thread for all teams to contribute to...in April.

My 2.5 cents for February,

JM

(Can't wait till the FIRST week of regionals - good luck to all)

[Joe Johnson]

Jason,

Good points. But... ...My main reason for starting this thread now rather than waiting until after the season was to capture stuff that is fresh in our heads now.

Predictions of how the game will be played are not really that useful right now. The main focus I would like to see is stuff that affected your robot design and build process.

Things like construction rules, material rules, game changes that affected the design and build, etc.

A focus on these types of rules now is worth the bother of this thread because after the season is up and running, these types of things fade into the background.

I feel they are important. Documenting them now is appropriate (imho).

Joe J.

P.S. With the slight exception of point #8 and the side issue of guessing why negative scoring was considered, all of the points in my initial message were of the kind I was suggestion folks submit.

[Jason Morrella]

Hey Joe,

I understand your point, and do agree that the original intention of this thread is indeed valuable.
And you are 100% right - there are a number of areas which can certainly be improved next year, as there are every year - and getting some of those down now while on our minds, especially with all the chaos of the competition season coming up, is certainly worth doing so we don't forget (my main item would be your # 6 - contradicting answers in the manual, updates, and message board). On the other hand, having attended a number of Team Forums, I have found that RARELY do teams actually forget problems, issues, and criticisms to gladly share with FIRST at the forums.

My reply was really directed at the posts which went off on tangents and were mainly speculation on things like how the game will be played and how it should be fixed, the Championship being better in Epcot in Houston, and other things which aren't worth harping on FIRST about until after the season is over.

Good luck at the Buckeye Regional next week!

(Now I REALLY wish 71 & 111, & some others - would follow the lead of the Delphis - Baker & Technokats and Johnson,Martus, & the Chief and post some pictures of your robots!!!!!!)

[Jim]

I agree with some comments made earlier. I will paraphrase here and insert some add'l thoughts:

(and keep it positive ;-)

Regarding the Manual -
For those with slow connections, offer the updates in a format that provides replacement pages. Clearly printed at the top of an update page is the print date, "supercedes MM/DD/YY", and the page number. The updates get read, and then dropped into an updated manual. I like the idea of using strike-throughs and bolding on the changes. If a change go so far as to require add'l pages, it can always be split to "replace page 20 with pages 20a and 20b"

For those with fast connections, always have the latest, fully updated manual available. If I grab that version, then my freshly downloaded and printed manual should resemble a properly updated manual; minus the coffee and krispy kreme stains


Regarding the boards -
I like the idea of a "disregarded questions bin" (that's a nicer way of saying "stupid question bin", but we all know there is no such thing, right?)

The previous board format allowed subscriptions. For the most part, that worked well. I would like the opportunity to subscribe to a list that would send me (daily/weekly/?) the latest ANSWERED QUESTIONS. In fact, that mailing could also include the "disregarded questions" in two categories "already answered" and *ahem* "not well thought out"

An official, registered set of "Askers" from each team would be OK, but don't limit the number of people that could subscribe to the answers. It is just as easy for someone to shoot the question over to their team's "Asker" as it is to ask it directly.

Regarding the game:
Keep on surprising us! Last year was great, this year was/is great.

I've never participated in a 4 v 0 format, but I think that could be done in a way as to be spectator friendly, too. It would just require that you watch more than one match to see how teams are doing. There is a certain positive social aspect being thrown together with a random alliance and figuring out how to maximize that alliances point total. The finals in that format could then switch to a slightly different game, or could be done with "Alliance One" competeing while "Alliance Two" waits "sequestered" unable to see what happens.

I said this during the last request for ideas and I'll say it again - adding a skill/requirement with easily discernible societal (sp?) value is a great idea. For example
-put a door on the field with a standard, round handled lockset - points provided for opening and closing the door. (this would not be an expensive item to add to a field)
-put plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and steel cans on the field - points for separating and storing

To all those at FIRST - keep up the good work and Thank You

[ChrisH]

First of all, I like this year's game and think it is the best we have had in years. Since 2000 at least.

My problems have mostly been with the robot rules. There is one item in our robot where we are still not sure whether or not we are compliant. Some people on the team read the rules (and updates) one way and say we are compliant, others say we aren't. For now we've decided to wait for the "consolidated" rules and see where we stand.

But since the robot has shipped it's a pretty pitiful state to be in. When we get to our first competition we are either going to be working our tushes off, or not. It's kind of a pain that we might not find out (due to delays in getting inspected) until mid-day or later on Thursday that we have a must fix issue.

If we had shipped at 135lbs we would know where we stand and be making plans to deal with it. But this other issue where there have been apparently contradictory rulings has us stymied. We will strive mightily to comply with the rules as soon as somebody can tell us what they are.

There is a slight possibility that we might get a reasonable answer from the Jive forum, but since I've already had three questions they refused to post, I doubt it. One thing the whole team agrees on is that the Jive forums are appropriately named. In fact, when I first saw them refered to that way I thought it was an editorial comment based on last year. While this year has been an improvment in many ways over last year, I still think the name is apt.

On 4v0, I think it might be more workable with the proper game and the current rules for alliances. Our biggest problems with that game were the result having to decide a strategy and communicate it in two minutes in an environment where communication is difficult under any circumstances. Too often, he who shouted loudest won by intimidation. There was no time for every team to present their idea on how to play the match. The current rules, where you know your partners up to a day ahead of time removes all of that pressure.

On the other hand, with 2v2 you have water polo and with 4v0 you have synchronized swimming. Which is more exciting to watch and more likely to get people to want to participate? At our church men's retreat, I've seen plenty of spontaneous water polo matches, but never spontaneous synchronized swimming. Somehow I just don't think I ever will.