The Noodle Agreement

[Nemo]

I don't like this. I hope the GDC fixes the scoring rules in a way that removes any incentive for both teams to leave litter on their sides.

Any rule change needs to modify the game in a way that doesn't force referees to judge whether there was intent to make a noodle agreement vs teams accidentally leaving litter in a particular place. That would be even worse.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Cory

fouls decrease your own score. 3.1.3. This was a change for 2015.

I thought botbuddy was referring to noodle litter points. Re-reading it, your interpretation seems like the correct one.

[bharrison6]

Originally Posted by Dival

They can prohibit strategic throwing of a pool noodle above the wall and into your zone.
Or something similar, shouldn't be too hard...

Or they could just make those points count against you rather than for the other team. I know first hates to take points away, but engineering uses negative numbers all the time.

[alopex_rex]

Having unprocessed litter points count against you would mean there wouldn't be much incentive for the other alliance to try and throw litter to your side. Getting 4 points benefits them directly, removing 4 from you helps them very little. I believe this is why litter counts positive in the first place.

[TomBuchler]

I just had this thought to TNA. This agreement could be blown out of the water if FRC simply adjusted the rules and had blue colored noodles for the blue alliance and red colored noodles for the red alliance. And the objective would be to have the blue alliances noodles land in the red alliance area and vice versa to score points.

[bharrison6]

Originally Posted by Sparkyshires

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"

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this, however I can agree that as a mentor and educator trying to grow a program its hard to get students excited about a game like this as opposed to a game like last year. It's exciting to see robots run into each other at full speed and have pushing matches. At the same time this kind of game has more roots in actual robotics used in industry. I think the mechanics used in this kind of game. (Pick, Stack and place) could be introduced in a more exciting way, rather than a recycling themed game.

[mannybjh]

This idea was brought up in my meeting. Could work... assuming you have trust in the other alliance

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by mannybjh

... assuming you have trust in the other alliance

This is it right here. The million dollar question.

In my mind, if a coach stares me in the eye, agrees to this, and shakes my hand, that's really the end of it. I'll trust him/her to make this happen and alert me if their alliance changes their mind.

However, renege on this, and you're word means nothing anymore. I may even come onto CD and let everyone know that your team can't be trusted to hold their promises moving forward.

I give it one week, maybe two, before teams leverage this option and the rankings end up being a little skewed. However, after the initial adoption period, this'll be a common occurrence, in my mind.

- Sunny G.

[tindleroot]

I suppose the entirety of FRC could make a "TNA Blacklist" for teams that have gone back on their promise, but that sounds way too dark and against Gracious Professionalism that I'm not sure if that's a good idea.

[pbhead]

Originally Posted by tindleroot

I suppose the entirety of FRC could make a "TNA Blacklist" for teams that have gone back on their promise, but that sounds way too dark and against Gracious Professionalism that I'm not sure if that's a good idea.

Call me an optimist, but i dont think either will a 'blacklist' nor a team going back on their word (at least purposefully) will happen.

[Sparkyshires]

Originally Posted by bharrison6

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this, however I can agree that as a mentor and educator trying to grow a program its hard to get students excited about a game like this as opposed to a game like last year. It's exciting to see robots run into each other at full speed and have pushing matches. At the same time this kind of game has more roots in actual robotics used in industry. I think the mechanics used in this kind of game. (Pick, Stack and place) could be introduced in a more exciting way, rather than a recycling themed game.

Exactly. Looking back at my post, I realized it sounded a lot more argumentative than I meant, my bad o.O let me try and say it a different way: I am the CO of the MCJROTC program at my school, and we've got a bunch of lugheads running around here doing push-ups wherever they can. Over the past four year's I've actually managed to get two of them to join the team and a bunch to come to the competitions, because it looks awesome. That's the whole idea of FIRST, right? Don't just have the geeks and the nerds, but the jockeys and everyone enjoy it and get excited. How am I going to convince those freshman and sophomore that they should come to this competition? In my opinion, that's been a major part of FRC that they've done absolutely beautifully these last couple years. I'm simply frustrated that at least on the spectator aspect of this game for people that haven't already done FRC, it is severely lacking.

[GaryVoshol]

For those who are saying that this doesn't support the concept of recycling:

After 16 years involvement with FLL, where there is always a themed game, I have to say that you can't read an interpretation into the game based on the theme. FLL has never done that. The theme is the theme; the game is the game. For example, one of the tasks this year was to shoot a ball into a net, like soccer. But the ball had to stay in the net; if it bounced back out the mission was not accomplished, unlike soccer where the goal would be scored whether the ball stayed in the net or not.

So discuss TNA on its merits alone, not on whether it violates the theme of the game. Because that doesn't matter.

[Debbie]

Originally Posted by jblay

...

I really hope first gives an update that makes this not okay somehow.

Me too!

[EricH]

Originally Posted by pbhead

Call me an optimist, but i dont think either will a 'blacklist' nor a team going back on their word (at least purposefully) will happen.

Riiight.

I know for a fact that some teams have internal blacklists. And I also know for a fact that this is NOT the first time this sort of discussion has happened, and there WERE teams that broke the agreement (if it was made).

[p00rleno]

Easy fix, color the noodles. Red litter can only be unprocessed on the blue side, blue litter on the red side. Either side's litter can be scored in the landfill though, because if that's all you can manage to do (go for 1 point per noodle), there's no reason to take it away.