The Noodle Agreement

[Chinmay]

Originally Posted by sanelss

those are pristine condition noodles. you can forget about them being anything like that on the actual game field.

one of the team members tied it into a knot before I tried this... lol they're pretty pliable and can be returned to semi straight before throwing... idk give it a shot with yours

[matthewdenny]

FIRST could also color code the noodles. Red team throws red noodles, and only get 4 points for red noodles in the blue zone. I'm sure there are more details to work out, but I've only had the manual for a day.

[Grim Tuesday]

This "Noodle Coopertition" was apparent to a number of members on our team as well. Is it possible that the GDC totally missed it (a la 2011 spring powered minibots) or is this another coopertition aspect? The GDC is made up of extremely intelligent and talented individuals and this is a pretty huge flaw (if it is indeed one) for them not to have noticed. Personally, I really enjoy the idea of the highly strategic gameplay it brings.

To anyone who says this is "not GP," that's a whole argument in and of itself, but with this game especially, the goal is for both alliances to score as many points by themselves as possible at a time. There is not semblance of this being a real sport (like Breakaway, where 6v0 was very controversial because of the soccer roots). TNA is the epitome of coopertition, if pulled off correctly, and any bad blood created will be well deserved.

There are problems with making noodles -4 and -2. All scoring in this game is based entirely on what your alliance is able to do. Making noodles a negative changes your score based on the actions of the opposing alliance. This messes with the entire scoring and seeding system for this game. If the GDC does choose to "fix" this, then I think the best solution is red and blue noodles, though you do lose the aspect of accidentally littering your side of the field.

[John]

Originally Posted by matthewdenny

FIRST could also color code the noodles. Red team throws red noodles, and only get 4 points for red noodles in the blue zone. I'm sure there are more details to work out, but I've only had the manual for a day.

I think this is the best solution, if FIRST decides to prevent this situation via a rule change. No points are awarded to RED if BLUE drops its own noodles its side. RED only receives points for getting its own (red-colored) noodles to the BLUE side. The color allows referees to easily determine which noodles originated on each side.

A variation of the agreement still would exist, where each team agrees not to remove the noodles that the other team throws across the field, but this is less of a problem (because it is harder to throw the noodle ~35 feet over the opposing alliance's LANDFILL ZONE than to just drop the noodles on your side).

The one side effect I can think of for this change is this removes the "penalty" (not really a penalty, a bonus to the other side) for accidentally dropping one of your noodles and failing to remove it. I don't think this is a particularly important component of the game though.

[rich2202]

The easy scoring change to prevent a Noodle Agreement is:

Only the net difference is scored.

So if Red has 4 Litter on the field (outside the landfill/scored container), and Blue has 6, then Red gets the benefit of +2 Litter (2 less than Blue), or 8 points.

[Mrjcowman]

Originally Posted by matthewdenny

FIRST could also color code the noodles. Red team throws red noodles, and only get 4 points for red noodles in the blue zone. I'm sure there are more details to work out, but I've only had the manual for a day.

Everyone seems to think color coding is a good idea, and I suppose it's viable, but what of this strategy? Assuming the opposing alliance littered your side, you could litter your side, too, and you have twice the noodles to then score atop containers or in the landfill. On the flipside of the coin, if you don't manage to throw into their zone, then it's litter you are responsible for and you must pick it up, or be penalized because there's litter on your side.

Ignoring any sense of throwing litter at anybody, focusing solely on your half of the game, the point is to stack totes, recycle bins, and process litter. Everyone litters, so it doesn't matter how it got there, if you don't process it, the opposing alliance gets the advantage.

The Noodle Agreement, if the other alliance were to go against it, would just result in you having more noodles to potentially score with if you have a bot on your alliance that can handle noodles. Really, this has the potential to make a whole different kind of robot a viable alliance member, and suddenly the one that's good at picking up noodles is the MVP. Assuming you don't color-code the noodles.

[Sparkyshires]

You have to admit though, this is a fair point. Personally, I think my team has already decided we're not going to. It's not very graciously professional, and you leave yourself too open to have bad blood created between teams that could last a lifetime. Instead of risk someone backstabbing you and just overall not going the FIRST way, it'll be better to just not do it.

HINT TO THE GDC HINT HINT: I very much think the rule should get changed to a normalizing thing, for ex if blue alliance has 7 on the floor, and red has 4, instead of adding 28 to red and 16 to blue, normalize it so that it's comparable to blue has 3, and red has 0, and then only add 12 to red's score. This does minimal change to the rule's, and totally nullifies the noodle agreement dilemna.

[alopex_rex]

Originally Posted by Sparkyshires

HINT TO THE GDC HINT HINT: I very much think the rule should get changed to a normalizing thing, for ex if blue alliance has 7 on the floor, and red has 4, instead of adding 28 to red and 16 to blue, normalize it so that it's comparable to blue has 3, and red has 0, and then only add 12 to red's score. This does minimal change to the rule's, and totally nullifies the noodle agreement dilemna.

YES.
please.

TNA seemed cool at first, but the more I think about it the more it seems like it would just be annoying for everyone. It's an exploitation of the rules, that doesn't even have anything to do with robot functionality. If rankings were heavily affected by who did or didn't go along with TNA, it would give the entire competition an air of illegitimacy. Events should be tests of robots, not large-scale experiments in game theory.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Originally Posted by Sparkyshires

YHINT TO THE GDC HINT HINT: I very much think the rule should get changed to a normalizing thing, for ex if blue alliance has 7 on the floor, and red has 4, instead of adding 28 to red and 16 to blue, normalize it so that it's comparable to blue has 3, and red has 0, and then only add 12 to red's score. This does minimal change to the rule's, and totally nullifies the noodle agreement dilemna.

I was thinking this when my team discussed it earlier today. It keeps the spirit of the rule and prevents gaming it.

[Sparkyshires]

Originally Posted by Jeanne Boyarsky

I was thinking this when my team discussed it earlier today. It keeps the spirit of the rule and prevents gaming it.

Exactly. There's no coloring the noodles, no added game prep, and it keeps the spirit of the rule, but doesn't let people exploit it by mutually scoring for each other. It's the simplest solution.

[Mike Marandola]

Originally Posted by Chinmay

one of the team members tied it into a knot before I tried this... lol they're pretty pliable and can be returned to semi straight before throwing... idk give it a shot with yours

This would be illegal per G16.