Week 1 Observations

[carpedav000]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

IRI should remove the noodles, replace them with one Aerial Assist ball per alliance that can be used for descoring, and let teams enter either their 2014 or 2015 robots as they see fit. That would make this game a lot more interesting to watch, and hey, it's recycling?

That would make this game much more exciting to watch. And why not, they already recycled part of arial assist (the podium turning into the noodle holder).

[Jared]

Autonomous mode was very important. Very few teams were able to score very many points in auto, so our 20 point auto gave us a huge advantage.

Grabbing containers from the step in auto is very important. Lots of capped short stacks are a great way to get points without the worry of super high stacks. It also lets you score many noodle points and makes it more difficult for the other alliance to deal with containers.

The field has some weird behavior with talking to the driver station. From time to time, some driver stations just don't connect to the FMS. Restarting the driver station and disabling/re enabling the network adapter fixed these problems.

It is extremely difficult to transport a 78" tall robot. You cannot tilt it, or you will violate the transport configuration. To fit through a doorway, you need a cart that almost drags on the ground, which won't go over bumps in the ground. You can't tilt the robot to get it through the doorway. Also, when carrying it, you must hold the robot upright.

Coopertition impacts the rankings quite a bit, but isn't always the best strategy. 40 points is a lot of points, but it's hard to be sure it'll work out. Consistency is really important, so a capped six stack for 36 points (or 42 with noodle) seems like a better option, and takes a similar amount of time.

Autonomous mode needs a five second delay to let the referees score things.
The referees have .2 seconds to judge 30+ things
Location of robot x6
Location of tote x6
Location of container x10
Contact between robot/tote x6
Stacked status of totes x2
and fouls for container grabbers.

[Oromus]

We noticed at the Georgia Southern Classic Regional that there were three common penalties:

• Human players were often throwing litter after the 20 second mark.
• Multiple people were often in human player area at the same time.
• Teams were accidentally knocking yellow totes off the step and into the opposing alliance's side.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

I'm sorry, when has this ever not been true? In 2013, could a team without excellent engineering, manufacturing and programming skills have built a robot with a 7 disk auto and a 30 point climb? Could a team without those skills have had a 3 ball auto for Aerial Assist? High scoring robots are built by teams that excel in all of these areas, regardless of the game.

Those are not core functionality to play the game competitively. Stacking reliably is. Case in point, in 2013 I won 2 regionals with a 10 point hang and no floor loader. A robot well within the capabilities of ANYONE with a hack saw and a power drill. In 2014 I won 3 districts with a robot without a 3 ball auto, slightly more complicated robot but with VP still within the range of abilities for dedicated students to build with basic resources, but what's worse, a team that was a decent intake (which anyone with a power drill and hack saw should have been able to build) would have been INCREDIBLY valuable. This year? Drastically harder to achieve basic game objectives. Let's break down what options a low resource team has that aren't stacks on stacks on stacks.

1. RC specialist - Great idea until you realize it's a 9lb object that you need to accurately move to 70"+ in the air while only having 6" of it to grip on to. Oh, and you risk knocking over a stack. Not really viable.

2. Litter specialist - Robots aren't allowed to throw litter so the best you can do is clear it, viable but not anywhere near a solid pick imho.

3. Coop Stacker - Ignoring that if you can do this you can stack bins of at least 4... it almost requires a floor loader (which is kinda hard) and is worthless in eliminations. Though could possibly seed high and pick a stacking team. Likely wouldn't win.

4. RC grabber - Ok, this one works. Sorta. At early events they might have a chance but they are completely reliant on being picked since they effectively can't score any points on their own. Plus by CMP (or DCMP) they will be effectively overshadowed by greater speed and precision of the top tier teams who realize it's too important a role to be left to unreliable partners.

So, I'm not seeing any viable options for lower resource teams to be competitive. I feel the MCC this year is a little sparse on the Minimum part.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

4) This game did not pass the "wife" test (my litmus test for the crowd-pleasing-ness of a game is to show it to my wife). The scoring was easy for her to understand, but she did not find it interesting to watch in the least. (As background she really liked 2006, 2011, 2012, 2013; tolerated 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2014; and despised 2009).

...

Not only would this eliminate the (questionable) penalty for trying and failing to co-op, but it would have given rise to a new class of "tote catapult" robots during elims! Stacking high? Better be ready to protect them...

I got my wife to pause House of Cards on Saturday night to watch Dallas F2. She felt the same way. The challenge is definitely one of the better ones to design for - but entertaining to watch, it is not. She puts it above 2010 though.

If only there were a legal way to knock over an opponent's stack...

[Breadbocks]

Just my 2 cents after participating in Georgia Southern Classic regional.

1. Noodles are god. One team carried themselves to second seed purely off the back of one really, really, really good noodle thrower. In one of the elims he went 10 for 10. Their robot wasn't on the level it should've been to succeed that much but because noodle scoring is so ridiculous they got very, very far.

2. Coopertition is necessary if you want a prayer at getting high seeding, you need to get the coopertition stacks. They inflate your average an absurd amount. Early on, my team didn't get it and it murdered our average. We had a game near the start where we got the coopertition stack and a couple totes in the center and that was it and that still bumped up our average a significant margin.

3. Containers fall, everyone dies. Nuff said.

4. Autonomous is critical. Bare minimum, you absolutely need to move to the auton zone. Because of one match in elims where an alliance member missed the auton zone by 3 inches, which meant we had slightly lower auton points than the opposing alliance, we lost the tie breaker that would've put us up to 4th place and let us move on to semis.

[who716]

I'm sure some team are aware of this but Ik others are not yellow totes do not count for anything outside of auto in the eliminations don't stzck them on coop don't stack them on platform they do not count,......... But by but but you CAN USE THEM IN AUTO a team came to me and asked why they were using the yellow totes in elimnations as they though they were completely useless

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by who716

I'm sure some team are aware of this but Ik others are not yellow totes do not count for anything outside of auto in the eliminations don't stzck them on coop don't stack them on platform they do not count,......... But by but but you CAN USE THEM IN AUTO a team came to me and asked why they were using the yellow totes in elimnations as they though they were completely useless

For the elims:

If your auto programs allow to get all 3 into the auto zone (or stacked in the auto zone) then they are extremely useful. If your auto cannot do these, then remove them from the field.

Simple enough.

[Anupam Goli]

Scouting and forming alliances in this game takes a lot of thought. You have to figure out who is good at what role for your alliance. Also, scouting wins regionals, as usual.

In the playoffs, it isn't about one single robot's versatility or capability (well, most of the time). It's about how well your alliance can work with each other. Our alliance won our regional because each robot had its own role and specialized in one part of the field and game. We combined those abilities, and no other alliance at the event could come close to our scores. Our lowest score as an alliance was higher than the highest score any alliance put up in the playoffs.

[rich2202]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

During a field timeout, it will only delay matches for teams to have to recharge pneumatics off the field, when it could easily be done on the field as it has been done in every year I can remember.

I don't think G14 is being applied to Field Time Outs. The Refs realize it just delays things. That said, if a robot moves something in a potentially dangerous way, without people being warned, that would be a problem.

There was a situation in the Eliminations where one alliance had to switch sides of the field. The robots had to be put into transport configuration to switch sides.

In general I don't understand why the FRC rule book needs to be so strict. Everyone is out here to play, have fun, and yes to win. The VEX rule book gives the head referee a lot of room to give teams warning before and after they commit offenses before drastic action is taken. Why isn't this the same in FRC.

You forget the discretion element. In general, Head Refs are very reluctant to give Red Cards (Regular Refs tell the Head Ref, but the call is up to the Head Ref). Writing a strict rule gives Head Refs a lot of cover when they actually have to use the rule. By then, either it is an egregious rule violation, or the team has been warned.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Mike Copioli

1. Check the seating depth of your PDP fuses, I cannot stress this enough. A good rule of thumb for this; If you can remove the fuse by hand, without the use of pliers, then it is NOT properly seated.

We also saw this at Inland Empire. After two robots died in the playoffs because of this, we checked every playoff team and found around 25% were loose.

[MechEng83]

Originally Posted by rich2202

I don't think G14 is being applied to Field Time Outs.

It was at ININD.

The larger problem I see is that a red card is *almost* an automatic elim DQ, rather than just a match DQ like previous years because of the average match score advancement criteria.

[angelah]

Originally Posted by Abrakadabra

Yes - my feelings exactly! In a game that is meant to showcase precise robot engineering and manipulation skills, the noodles just seem like a cheap distraction.

This.

FIRST is an alternative to sports in my mind, a way for students who are interested in science, math, and engineering to have their own "place." They spent six weeks building robots, and then (at least at our event) all the fan's and media's attention went to a tall athletic guy who could throw things well. That's pretty much just any other high school activity now. (And 4/13 students on my team are athletes, so I'm not anti-sports in general.)

Sure, I suppose it is a realistic picture of the world the students will enter, but I thought FIRST was about changing the culture.

[IronicDeadBird]

The noodles were game pieces from the start I don't see why people didn't design around moving litter from day 1.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

The noodles were game pieces from the start I don't see why people didn't design around moving litter from day 1.

You can design around the Human Player station vs robot start arrangement in Lunacy, but that doesn't make it an awful game mechanic.

You can recognize the existence of the dogma in 2010 and train your human players to be acutely aware of it, but that doesn't make it a bad game mechanic.

You can strategize around the 10 protected areas of the field in Logomotion, but that doesn't make it a bad game mechanic.

You can recognize how the scoring weights in 2013 strongly favored throwing discs over Level 3 climbing in 95/100 cases, but you can still wish FIRST would have weighted the scores differently.

You can play a slower but less ambiguous assist cycle in Aerial Assist so referees accurately count your assists, but that doesn't make the scoring method of assists by the referees a bad idea.

Litter was seen as an issue robots would run into since Kickoff. Without looking at it, I think Karthik had mobility around litter as one of the top 4 requirements for playing the game. Litter was expected to be a total pain to work with.

Game design has to serve many masters, and this makes game design difficult. Is it a game teams enjoy designing for? Is it a game teams enjoy playing? Is it a game that spectators enjoy watching? Is it a game that "serves itself" well (not allowing for rulings resulting from a wide gap of interpretations, having an intelligent seeding system, having a safe and expedient field cycle time)? Is it a game that fulfills the mission of FIRST and FRC? While the game design committee may have different priorities (serving one master before the others) this is the order of importance I perceive as a former student and coach in the organization.

These are all of the masters an FRC game has to serve in order to be considered a success. One of the reasons Aim High and Ultimate Ascent make the top of the lists for game quality is because it manages to serve all of the masters with varying levels. The reason Lunacy scores so low? It was not fun to design for or play and wasn't easy to watch. Aerial Assist was fun to play and watch, but designing for it was pretty boring and the game did not serve itself very well. Recycle Rush may have been a fun game to design for and serves itself pretty well, but it sucks to play and watch.