Team Update 14 (2016)

[mathking]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Trust me, I'm not forgetting this is an engineering sport. But breaking the rules is not engineering. If I issue a requirement for a contract, and you come back with a design that "technically" meets that requirement, but doesn't meet the intent of what I want accomplished, I'm not going to issue you that contract. Sure, you found a way to satisfy my requirements, but it's not the product I want to pay someone to produce. Engineering involves finding solutions to problems, not merely sidestepping them.


Further still, bringing a practice robot to an event isn't finding a novel strategy that "breaks the game," it's bending the rules. It doesn't even seem to meet your "Zebracorn" design philosophy, as it's not even a design choice. The only cultural value you seem to be stressing with this move is trying to thumb your nose at the GDC (at best).

I agree with this. Some of the most important tasks my team and my classes undertake are the ones for clients. Learning to make something that the client or customer wants is important. And yes, sometimes a really novel approach is awesome. But if you submit a bid, get a contract and produce a final product that technically satisfies the the terms in the bid but is not what the client really needs or wants you are not going to keep getting clients.

Breaking the game, to my reasoning, isn't finding a loophole in the rules about spare parts. It is great to think about the rules of the game and come up with an off the wall strategy that may never have been considered by the GDC. Such as figuring out you can redirect soccer balls right back into a goal with the right bot in a fixed position. And when that is a strategy goal you should always prepare for the possibility that someone clarifies or changes the rule and takes that strategy off the table.

All that said, I see what teams likely want this year. If you can bag two complete robots, you can effectively absorb twice as much damage. It makes practice field work less risky, since you aren't worried about breaking the competition robot. And I do think that teams that bagged two robots shouldn't be penalized and should be allowed to use one as spare parts for the other. Teams that bagged just spare parts of every component can do the same thing.

As for the "Reasonably astute observer" part of the rules, the trade off of getting rid of that phrase is a lot more rules.

[Chris is me]

Can we just get rid of bag day and withholding allowances already? Who does it really stop anyway? Anyone who wants to be competitive (with some rare exceptions) just builds another robot. Rebuilds from the drive base up are not unusual even with just 30 pounds. Teams now plan their entire seasons around gradually upgrading and rebuilding their robots over the course of multiple events. No matter what insane patchwork of rules the GDC writes, any team that wants to win the world championship is going to squeeze every last drop out of the rules to do as much as they can as long as they can. Let's be done with this nonsense, so we can save teams across the world thousands of dollars each and make all of FRC more competitive. Aren't we all sick of this?

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Can we just get rid of bag day and withholding allowances already? ... Aren't we all sick of this?

no.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

It seems like a clear wording to me... and doesn't change the original intent of the rule. I'm not sure what we're supposed to be upset about in this thread.

I'm 99 44/100% certain that the phrase "enter a robot in an FRC event" was originally meant to mean approximately "submit a robot for inspection in order to compete using it". That's the usage of "enter" that goes along with a competition such as a foot race or dog show.

The new definition in the blue box turns "event" into a place instead of a competition, and turns "enter" into a physical movement instead of the equivalent of pointing to a robot and saying "That's what we will be putting on the field." It reinterprets the meaning of the words to fit a desired goal.

As I said before, I am basically in agreement with what this change does. I'm just disappointed that the GDC chose to redefine what "enter an event" means instead of finding -- or creating -- a better place to say "don't bring more than one FRC robot capable of playing the game". The current wording does have at least one effect that I consider undesirable: it now makes bringing things like FRC-sized showbots illegal, even if they could never pass inspection.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Can we just get rid of bag day and withholding allowances already? Who does it really stop anyway? Anyone who wants to be competitive (with some rare exceptions) just builds another robot. Rebuilds from the drive base up are not unusual even with just 30 pounds. Teams now plan their entire seasons around gradually upgrading and rebuilding their robots over the course of multiple events. No matter what insane patchwork of rules the GDC writes, any team that wants to win the world championship is going to squeeze every last drop out of the rules to do as much as they can as long as they can. Let's be done with this nonsense, so we can save teams across the world thousands of dollars each and make all of FRC more competitive. Aren't we all sick of this?

Originally Posted by Taylor

no.

Yes.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

Yes.

[galewind]

What frustrates me the MOST about this update is the change of the size of the vision target. Why was this necessary?

(Time to adjust target and change our auto-targeting code).

[tstew]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Please do give up at finding loopholes.

The reason rules like these have to exist isn't because bag day or the GDC, it's because teams try to find ways around the rules. For a long time, the culture discouraged "lawyering" the rules instead of following the intent. Teams that try to find the loopholes to gain an advantage rather than following the intent is what causes rules like this to be necessary.

The game manual talks about intent.

Originally Posted by FRC 2016 Game Manual Section 1.4

The intent of this manual is that the text means exactly, and only, what it says. Please avoid interpreting the text based on assumptions about intent, implementation of past rules, or how a situation might be in “real life.” There are no hidden requirements or restrictions. If you’ve read everything, you know everything.

[thatnameistaken]

Originally Posted by galewind

What frustrates me the MOST about this update is the change of the size of the vision target. Why was this necessary?

(Time to adjust target and change our auto-targeting code).

This was in update 7; they forgot to alter the text until now. The diagram has showed the proper height for a month.

[NShep98]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Please do give up at finding loopholes.

This would be my response if someone were to get overly upset upon said loophole being closed as a result of their actions.

Originally Posted by marshall

Unlike a lot of teams, one of those goals is always "break the game".

I personally applaud this effort, so long as you ("you" meaning anyone reading this with this mindset) understand, as it seems Marshall already does, that FIRST has the right to change the rules on you if they feel that you broke the game badly enough that it is now less enjoyable for everyone else. Finding a unique solution not explicitly prohibited is a different story altogether, and can often result in some pretty cool, entertaining robots.

[Coach Norm]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I actually impounded a spare robot as Lonestar LRI once. A team brought it in on Thursday morning to remove part of it for their competition robot. Since it was well over the withholding allowance, I told them to pull whatever they wanted or thought they needed right away (under withholding limits), then impounded the remainder for the rest of the regional.
...

I'm pretty sure Norm's forgiven me by now.

Kevin,

I can say I learned my lesson the hard way for sure on that one. It was definitely an oversight on my part as our team lead. No hard feelings and I completely understand the position we put you in as LRI.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Coach Norm

Kevin,

I can say I learned my lesson the hard way for sure on that one. It was definitely an oversight on my part as our team lead. No hard feelings and I completely understand the position we put you in as LRI.

Smells like gracious professionalism in here...

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Can we just get rid of bag day and withholding allowances already? Who does it really stop anyway? Anyone who wants to be competitive (with some rare exceptions) just builds another robot. Rebuilds from the drive base up are not unusual even with just 30 pounds. Teams now plan their entire seasons around gradually upgrading and rebuilding their robots over the course of multiple events. No matter what insane patchwork of rules the GDC writes, any team that wants to win the world championship is going to squeeze every last drop out of the rules to do as much as they can as long as they can. Let's be done with this nonsense, so we can save teams across the world thousands of dollars each and make all of FRC more competitive. Aren't we all sick of this?

I do agree that there are many people who are sick of bag day along with the rules and restrictions that come with it. However, there are many teams and people out there who are in full support of bag day, many of which claim that they will no longer be involved in FRC if these restrictions are lifted. Frankly, I don't know which camp I'm a part of. However, I do know that there are enough people on both sides of this argument that we can't just assume that everyone wants to end the "6 week build".

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Can we just get rid of bag day and withholding allowances already?

I'm with Chris on this one. I think everyone knows that the teams with the resources will build 2 or 3 or as many robots as needed to be competitive. Bag day really only hurts the teams that can only build one robot and that's a good chunk of FRC teams. 4329 builds two robots because it gives us a huge competitive advantage. We've iterated a lot over the past week in our shop & fixed things that would have absolutely killed our first regional performance.

Remove bag day and you level the playing field for a lot for teams. Districts help with un-bag windows but a lot of us aren't there yet. Not wanting to change this because 'that's the way it has always been' is silly - look at how well District events are going and how people were very hesitant to switch at first. Change can be a good thing and is necessary if we want FRC to grow.

[FrankJ]

Does this count as breaking the game?