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