Cheesecake: How far is too far?

[Jared Russell]

IMO, we should just limit it to parts that enter the venue as COTS. Easy to understand and enforce, still allows for many useful types of cheesecake, but it kills the "we build a mechanism and you bring a chassis to fit it" meta-game.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

IMO, we should just limit it to parts that enter the venue as COTS. Easy to understand and enforce, still allows for many useful types of cheesecake, but it kills the "we build a mechanism and you bring a chassis to fit it" meta-game.

Do you think that is enough though? Most of the canburgling mechanisms and truthfully, even the harpoons, could probably have been built with COTS at the event with enough pre-planning. I'm not sure that is the right limit unless the game design discourages it as well.

[Donut]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

IMO, we should just limit it to parts that enter the venue as COTS. Easy to understand and enforce, still allows for many useful types of cheesecake, but it kills the "we build a mechanism and you bring a chassis to fit it" meta-game.

This, mostly. If you can build an entire new mechanism from parts while at the competition I think you should reap the benefits, as that is no small task even for a powerhouse. Plus that still allows robots to be built collaboratively at the competition (due to theft, shipping issues, total robot destruction, etc).

The only gray area to me is the withholding allowance. For those who do not want pre-built mechanisms at all it would be cumbersome to enforce that withholding allowance parts only make it onto the robot of the team that brought them. I'm fine with withholding parts going wherever but can understand that 35 lbs is a lot of weight to work with.

[Chris Hibner]

I'm donning my fire proof suit as I write this...

As I mentioned on FRC GameSense last week, I'm not a big fan of "Cheesecaking". I actually have what I think is a better word for it, but that's beside the point.

If it's a small upgrade, or "this mechanism would work better if you made this improvement", then I think that's great as long as the team gets to keep the improvement. When it becomes adding entire pre-planned mechanisms or completely rebuilding large portions of a robot, I'm not a fan.

There are many reasons that I feel the way I do, but I don't want this post to become a novel.

For now I'll only give one reason: There are good teams with good robots that get left out of eliminations as a result. I have been to more than one event in which I saw teams that were definitely in the top 24 robots at the competition sit on the sidelines during eliminations because it was easier to throw a bolt-on mechanism on a box-on wheels.

I've long had the opinion that the best robots should advance and win (yes - I rooted heavily for 469 in 2010) so the efforts of those teams can be rewarded. When a team that should be rewarded sits on the sidelines while a lesser team is rewarded, I have a feeling that the team that is sitting out has a problem with that - and I do too.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

If it's a small upgrade, or "this mechanism would work better if you made this improvement", then I think that's great as long as the team gets to keep the improvement. When it becomes adding entire pre-planned mechanisms or completely rebuilding large portions of a robot, I'm not a fan.

Maybe that should be a key part of all this. The recipient gets to keep whatever mods are made. That should reduce the incentive for a team to get cheesecaked primarily for the benefit of another team (especially if it's an expensive add-on), and encourage mods that help the recipient perform better on their own merit so they can positively contribute to the alliance.

[twetherbee]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

Maybe that should be a key part of all this. The recipient gets to keep whatever mods are made. That should reduce the incentive for a team to get cheesecaked primarily for the benefit of another team (especially if it's an expensive add-on), and encourage mods that help the recipient perform better on their own merit so they can positively contribute to the alliance.

The can grabbers we added to 2512 went home with them. They earned them. Awesome contributing alliance members and great group of people to work with.

I was not a fan of the level to which "cheesecaking" was done this year, either. But it had to be done to stay competitive in this year's game. One more reason to dislike Recycle Rush.

[piersklein]

I think that the biggest thing to remember when talking about cheecaking is that Winning is inspirational.

Every team in FRC wants to win. That is why it is a competition. And the reason of FIRST is inspiration, so we should be honor bound to do anything to inspire students. Cheesecaking, being cheesecaked, or even watching a cheesecake from 2000 miles away can be inspirational. I know even just sitting at home, I was inspired by some of the cheesecaking done by 1114 and company (and the secret 4488 cheesecake), engineering on that scale and in that timeframe is inspiring no matter what. That being said it must still be approached with caution. If the following rules were enforced (not by FIRST but by the community) I think cheesecaking would become an integral and inspiring part of every FRC season:
1. Never pressure a team into changing their robot
2. The Cheesecaking team may help with mentors, parts, tools, and students, but the cheesecakee must lead modifications.
3. Cheesecakee's should be allowed to keep modifications within reason (anything under a few hundred dollars)
4. Make sure the modifications are a learning experience for all involved.
5. Make it awesome

[Josh Fox]

Originally Posted by twetherbee

I was not a fan of the level to which "cheesecaking" was done this year, either. But it had to be done to stay competitive in this year's game. One more reason to dislike Recycle Rush.

Emphasis mine. I think this is the most concrete thing to take away from the discussion.

I'm a fan of cheesecake. If a "better" team can work with a "lesser" team (purely in terms of mechanical ability of their robot) to improve it, I'm all for it. If that happens to be with a relatively simple mechanism? So be it.

I'm very against bad game mechanics.

Last year, cheesecake would have generally meant putting some sort of guide, and often a passive one at that, onto a partner robot. This was necessary because of a poor set of rules that dictated a robot must "control" a ball to complete a pass, which was a fundamental and essential component of the game, instead of simply pushing it or touching it momentarily.

This year, matches were decided in fractions of a second because of an insane amount of importance placed on controlling the cans, and the inability to recover cans once the opposing alliance had them on their side of the field. Obviously allowing teams to recover them once they crossed to the other side would entirely change the dynamic of the game as a whole, but at the root of the issue is that same game dynamic.

If you don't want teams coming in with pre-fabbed mechanisms, maybe don't design tasks that are essential to the game that can be completed with something so simple, or find another way for teams that may have more difficulty accomplishing complex tasks a way to positively contribute (see: defense, pushing game pieces into a lower goal, etc.).

tl;dr don't hate the player, hate the game design

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by twetherbee

... I was not a fan of the level to which "cheesecaking" was done this year, either. But it had to be done to stay competitive in this year's game. One more reason to dislike Recycle Rush.

This. ^

The issue is choke holds in the game, not whether teams should help each other.

987 and several other top-caliber teams got it right, played by the rules, and made this game look as good as it could. RR has many aspects I really like, including the emphasis on consistency and scoring capability.* But the choke hold opportunity created by step cans should have been foreseen and corrected. I think the IRI committee will find a way to do that.

-----
*That said, I am not a fan of the "one bad match kills your seed" impact of straight average ranking, nor of the ranking bias due to relative strength of qualification alliance partners. Not sure if W-L-T (with tiebreakers) would have fixed these or not -- maybe someone will analyze and make constructive recommendations to the GDC.

[The Lucas]

Perhaps we need more transparency in regards to what constitutes every team's ROBOT and WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE. We could achieve this by having a website available to all teams with pictures of all robots with all configuration parts (like they are at weigh in) and possibly the withholding allowance as well.

A short anecdote: At an early competition, this year a team started installing using their own can burglar arms late in competition (prior to that they had kept them off so they wouldn't get in the way). Many people approached me (an RI) and the rest of the inspection crew about the that team changing their robot without getting reinspected. We told them that yes they did get weighed with those arms and it wasn't really a problem. However, now I think about those countless people that noticed the change but didn't ask a RI for clarification. Are they suspicious that the team was breaking the rules? In absence of any simple tools to gather better info, are they saying things that damage that team's reputation behind their back when that team followed proper procedure? They probably have similar questions about the RIs.

There are already tools in place to manage all these pictures. If you went to events in MAR, California, or North Carolina, you may have seen volunteers using the GMS (Game Management System) Android app to manage inspection, queuing, judging, etc... In MAR inspections, the basic procedure is to take a picture of the robot at weigh in. This picture is accessible to other volunteers in the Team Notes. It would not be hard to extend this functionality to designate a Current Robot Pic to for public sharing on the website that GMS already runs. For those events not ready to deploy a broad solution like GMS, simply take pictures and upload them automatically or at the end of the day to a photo sharing site.

The withholding allowance is a little more difficult since pretty much the only requirements under R17 is it is under 30lbs and loaded in initially. It is a set of items in different places (in or out of bag, attached to a robot or held off until necessary). A change in the inspection process would be needed. Perhaps by the end of the first qualification day, teams should collect all off robot FABRICATED ITEMS (whether they came from the bag, withholding allowance, or fabricated from COTS at the event) for inspection and picture.

An additional benefit of public pictures of robots is that teams will not have to devote resources to taking pictures of robots during pit scouting and teams without these resources will get the info for free. This can improve traffic flow in the pits since getting a good picture in the crowded pits can cause traffic jams.


This game is ending, but there will be future games where multiple configurations to fit different strategies will be very beneficial. Teams will continue to reconfigure their robot and their partners. With rulings like this Q&A 440, the incentives for reconfiguration are even greater. Consider the possibility of a team building 2 nearly full weight configurations that complement each other strategically. They move their control system between the 2 configs to fit qualifying match pairings, getting reinspected each time. For the playoffs they pick a configuration for their robot and have a partner plug their control system into the other config. If we are going to allow this level of reconfiguration, at the very least, the public should be informed at every step of the process.

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by The Lucas

This game is ending, but there will be future games where multiple configurations to fit different strategies will be very beneficial. Teams will continue to reconfigure their robot and their partners. With rulings like this Q&A 440, the incentives for reconfiguration are even greater. Consider the possibility of a team building 2 nearly full weight configurations that complement each other strategically. They move their control system between the 2 configs to fit qualifying match pairings, getting reinspected each time. For the playoffs they pick a configuration for their robot and have a partner plug their control system into the other config. If we are going to allow this level of reconfiguration, at the very least, the public should be informed at every step of the process.

Interestingly enough, a team tried this in the past.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=65363

In 2008 1519 has two different configurations (which, together, weighed inside the 120lb limit, so no need for re-inspection). It was designed so the control system could be taken out of one config and put into another. They were ruled illegal as the rules state that "Each registered FIRST Robotics Competition team can enter ONE (1) ROBOT into the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition" and the inspectors considered each configuration a separate robot.

[The Lucas]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

Interestingly enough, a team tried this in the past.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=65363

In 2008 1519 has two different configurations (which, together, weighed inside the 120lb limit, so no need for re-inspection). It was designed so the control system could be taken out of one config and put into another. They were ruled illegal as the rules state that "Each registered FIRST Robotics Competition team can enter ONE (1) ROBOT into the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition" and the inspectors considered each configuration a separate robot.

It is like you read my mind, I was thinking of the perils of Speed Racer when I was posting this. The rules have changed significantly since then. With the new Q&A it would seem you could have a 120lb Fezzik and get reinpected as Speed Racer as needed instead of inspecting them together and changing the power pathways (which was part of the 2 Robot ruling issue). 900 went from swerve drive arm bot to kit drive harpoon bot with a reinspection, and could possibly change back with a reinspect.
I only had experience with one team that used the frequent reinspect Q&A. They had different parts for landfill and human player stacking that they couldn't get them combined under the weight limit so they got reinspected when they changed. Personally, I wanted to switch out one canburglar arm for a stage can swatter to speed up a staked tote set auto (essentially mutually exclusive auto tasks). The Q&A happened during the season, so teams only had the Withholding Allowance weight limit to make fabricated parts for different config. I wonder what teams will do if this is still the ruling before Bag Day next year (essentially unlimited weight for different configs).

[FIMAlumni]

Well this poll didn't do what I thought would happen. I thought at least 50% of people would converge on a single answer. Instead we find that FRC is very divided on this. It will be very interesting to see what/if the GDC does about this.

[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by The Lucas

It is like you read my mind, I was thinking of the perils of Speed Racer when I was posting this. The rules have changed significantly since then. With the new Q&A it would seem you could have a 120lb Fezzik and get reinspected as Speed Racer as needed instead of inspecting them together and changing the power pathways (which was part of the 2 Robot ruling issue).

In all honesty, we had considered going with a "two part robot" (somewhat like 148) this year, but with the Speed Racer / Fezzik fiasco as part of our history on 1519, we didn't want to take the risk of having an unconventional design ruled illegal again.

This year's rule interpretations sure seem like the "dual configuration robot" approach we had in 2008 would have been permitted this year.

[Mastonevich]

Many times has been mentioned the 30 lb keep back limit in addition to any COTS.

What stops a team from bagging more than 120lbs?

Teams come in over weight at every regional. They reduce their weight and get inspected at 120 lbs. I think I have seen as much as 20lbs for some teams. What is the limit?

10, 20, 50, ?, ? lbs