Rules of Engagement and "Unfair Competition"

[Richard Neese]

I have seen the posts regarding "unfair competition" and "inflation of scores" at the UCF competition and am compelled to comment.

Team 147 did not initiate the strategy (and that is what it is, a strategy). We were approached by an adversary, who proposed the strategy in order to provide an opportunity for higher QP scores.
This is simply a matter of defining "rules of engagement" within the context of the rules of the game.

The rules of engagement are simple: violate any "no-touch" zone (e.g. a stack) either intentionally or accidentally and all offensive and defensive maneuvers are in play. Otherwise, the game is about jokeying for boxes this way or that way and asserting dominance on the ramp for a "chance" at a larger QP score.

To my knowledge during application of the strategy neither alliance ever agreed to "throw the match." Prudent teams protected their stacks, moved boxes into their scoring zone, moved boxes out of their opponents scoring zone, and tried to get on the ramp, and watched the score regardless of any pre-match discussions.

Of course, your opponents could lead you down the garden path and then this strategy could backfire.
Getting reliable agreements among people is an activity fraught with danger. This is something young engineers and technologists will discover the first time they encounter teaming agreements and non-disclosure agreements and work on teams with competitors to define "industry standards."

Also, even in systems sometimes your own components lie to you (I would encourage any students interested in Reliable Distributed Control Systems to look up the Byzantine Generals Problem).

Some teams will not agree under any circumstances. Some teams will pretend to agree. Some teams will agree and will accidentally violate the agreement.

I know that in 2 of 3 applications of the strategy, our alliance came out on the low side of the outcome. I am not a big fan of the strategy.

However, once the strategy is in play in a competition, you have to operate as though it is always in play, and that other teams will use it, until the referees say otherwise. To maximize your QP scores you have to explore the viability of applying the strategy in a given match with both your partner and your opponents.

Of course, such strategies are foolish in the elimination rounds. In those rounds, because of the context of the rules of the game (the sum of the EPs), the rules of engagement change: you must try to prevail over your opponent with a large enough EP score in the first match to make it difficult for them to "come back." That is the way the game is set up.

I have seen some very fine robots who can get to the stack, push large fractions of it to their zone, and dominate the top of the ramp. The "dominance" strategy tends to involve the wholescale destruction of all stacks on the field. That is a very effective strategy for elimination rounds, but it doesn't generate high QPs. It simply ignores that much of the game in qualification rounds goes on off the field in those discussions between partners and now opponents.

I for one am no great fan of this year's rules on scoring. I prefer the more straightforward approach of best score wins (where your score is a simple function of your score and not some convolution of your opponent's score) and two out of three decides who moves on.

Perhaps FIRST will make a ruling on this issue prior to the Nationals, but until they do, the cat is out of the bag.

Richard Neese
Team 147