The Noodle Agreement

[cglrcng]

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

TNA is very interesting to me. I'm still pretty on the fence if I would prefer it changed or not.

However, I find it hilarious that the game piece is named LITTER in a recycling themed game. If these rules are kept the same, here are some things you might hear at competition this year:
"We only want to litter if you litter as well"
"WHY AREN'T THEY LITTERING!"
"Wait, I forget, were we supposed to litter just now?"
"I can't believe they didn't litter."
"You said that you were going to litter and you didn't, we're going to cross you off our pick list now."
"There's only 30 seconds left, quick, litter as much as you can!"

________________________

Yes..."Recycling would be fully OUT THE WINDOW!" Not good in a game named "Recycle RUSH!" (I should be sleeping instead of laughing about the predicament of possible FRC wide TNA. But, I can't quit laughing enough to lay my head down yet). That, and I'm currently formatting a proposed "TNA littering contract" form between page reads. "Forget Recycling...Wanna sign a contract to litter?" Or,...We only agree to recycle 5 times, and litter 5 times...No, we want the rights to recycle 3 times and litter 7 times.......Oh boy!

[asid61]

Originally Posted by jtrv

Why would you backstab your alliance during elims...?

Elims are what matter people. Getting #1 seed doesn't win you the regional. It doesn't give you anything but first pick.

Assuming you don't follow TNA, you will want to be in the top 8 just to be safe. If you are known for breaking form like that, you're less likely to be picked. Unless your robot is amazing and stellar, it's not in your best interests to go against a strategy that has been agreed on.
Now, if you state you're not going to follow it from the beginning, that's fine.

[cglrcng]

Just imagine the TNA all agreed to, last Q Match of the day, seedings hang in the balance, that poor 1 student that just has to introduce that last bit of litter onto the field (given that if attempted properly, so as to trim down the chances of anyone possibly stepping out on your agreement, they alternated back & forth, introducing them late in the game blue/red/blue/red, etc., and that very last one in the students hands & haste & excitement to get that last litter noodle quickly onto the field catches the very edge of the hole, folds completely in half, and the timer runs out! Oyyyyyyy! (What kind of an effect can those 4 points have in a match). Plenty.

Maybe that is why they will allow a human player to become a driver in 2015! (I'm not doing that again....you go take that real pressure being the "Agreed Noodle Litterer!" I'll drive).

[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.

[Jade Z]

Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb)

You stated this earlier in the thread. But I can see many situations, especially in the beginning of a regional where not everyone does this because of not being aware or for strategic reasons. Then it becomes a must have to do it because it gives you a free edge over others that don't decide to do it. As others stated, it's more of a do it or suffer kind of decision but I'm sure there will be some that don't which does make it benefit people.

Sorry, I was having issues with CD. I still can't even see my previous post, but I know it's there. Don't mean to be obnoxious.

[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.

[Mrjcowman]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

How about looking at the difference in "scored noodles" and not just the total?
Example blue team tries to play TNA with red. Both dump all 10 noodles in their own zone. Both have 10 noodles .... Difference is zero so no added score to either side. Teams could still try to gain advantage of trying to throw into opposing side. This way some TNA "arrangement" would not benefit either team.

I do think that allowing this in ANY circumstance could lead to GDC unintended circumstances during elims though by collusion between two alliances to artificially raise one of the alliance's scores to beat out a higher ranked alliance's score that has already played

I would like to think that the intent of this game is to let alliances score as high as they can and let the best four (or two) scoring alliances move on during the playoffs.

The net gain idea is good, but, unfortunately, that still ends up with it somehow being okay if both sides are covered in litter, as long as they are equally covered in litter. I'd venture to say, from a "recycle rush" standpoint, that's still kinda wrecking the spirit of the game.

It would make far more sense if processed litter was worth more points than unprocessed litter. It encourages proper disposal techniques as opposed to littering, increases the benefit of the strategy I mentioned above, and, if alliances still wanted to make noodle agreements, makes the easy way out worth a lot less. If you wanted to get real points for a noodle agreement, you would agree to put equal numbers of noodles in the landfill.

[Sparkyshires]

Originally Posted by Mrjcowman

The net gain idea is good, but, unfortunately, that still ends up with it somehow being okay if both sides are covered in litter, as long as they are equally covered in litter. I'd venture to say, from a "recycle rush" standpoint, that's still kinda wrecking the spirit of the game.

It would make far more sense if processed litter was worth more points than unprocessed litter. It encourages proper disposal techniques as opposed to littering, increases the benefit of the strategy I mentioned above, and, if alliances still wanted to make noodle agreements, makes the easy way out worth a lot less. If you wanted to get real points for a noodle agreement, you would agree to put equal numbers of noodles in the landfill.

While that sounds good, the probably is that this is FRC, not FLL. While I love FIRST's impact on younger kids to make them try and want to do good in the world when they grow up and inspire them from a young age, that has never been FRC's goal. FRC has always been through and through, a competition where gracious professionalism and advancing STEM in the community is the most important. We have never had a themed game, because as rude as this may sound, it's childish. We are big boys and girls and deserve a big game to get hype about. The moment they start unbalancing the score points, (or have to rebalance everything after kickoff which would be a nightmare) - which anyone who plays league of legends knows that such a major score change would cause havoc among everything else - just to send the same message that it's bad to litter, is the moment that FRC has lost it's way in my opinion. FRC is not going to get popular in the community through games named stuff like "recycle rush"

[grainne]

Actually, there is no need to even drop the noodles into the playing field. Noodles in the bin in the drivers station area count as unscored so would therefore count for the other team. So both teams could just agree to leave all their noodles in their bin rather than making a clutter.

[Sparkyshires]

Originally Posted by grainne

Actually, there is no need to even drop the noodles into the playing field. Noodles in the bin in the drivers station area count as unscored so would therefore count for the other team. So both teams could just agree to leave all their noodles in their bin rather than making a clutter.

That's actually false. If you look at the top of page 22, it says: "Finally,
LITTER F remains in the Bin and does not score as an UNPROCESSED LITTER Bonus as it is not on the FIELD."

[Tem1514 Mentor]

After reading all of these very interesting ideas on the TNA and then going back into the manual at section 1.1 that states “RECYCLE RUSH is a recycling-themed game…” which to me means leaving LITTER or creating LITTER would not be in the sprit of the game so hopefully the GDC will provide a team update on Tuesday that makes LITTER a MINUS point value then we can all back to task at hand to help clean up our world rather then make a mess of it. IMHO

[Ian Chin]

The Noodle Agreement probably would not work for two reasons.
Reason 1:
If everyone leaves their noodles on the floor then no one actually benefits from it.
Reason 2:
Because of reason 1, you wouldn't be able to trust the other team.

[lsbd4]

As a spectator I think watching the human players tossing the noodles would be incredibly fun to watch!! I'm fairly optimistic that this issue will be addressed soon enough in the game rules.

[Sparkyshires]

Originally Posted by Ian Chin

The Noodle Agreement probably would not work for two reasons.
Reason 1:
If everyone leaves their noodles on the floor then no one actually benefits from it.
Reason 2:
Because of reason 1, you wouldn't be able to trust the other team.

Nope, everyone gets a +40 in that situation. If you're saying that if everyone at a competition does it, then that's highly unlikely.

[rjmah]

You don't even need to alternate. Each HP can preload a noodle in the chute then hold up their free arm. They drop arms and push in the litter simultaneously.