If YOU were the GDC...

[orangemoore]

Originally Posted by Drakxii

Change the bumper rules to only have a 7 inch window, instead of the current 12 inch window.

Um...

Originally Posted by R22

BUMPERS must be located entirely within the BUMPER ZONE, which is the volume contained
between two virtual horizontal planes, 4 in. above the floor and 12 in. above the floor, in reference
to the ROBOT standing normally on a flat floor. BUMPERS do not have to be parallel to the floor.

It is only an 8 inch window with 1 inch overlap at the very worst.

[Drakxii]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

Um...



It is only an 8 inch window with 1 inch overlap at the very worst.

Sorry remember the rule wrong, it still should be a larger overlap then 1 inch.

[Andy A.]

I think this years game was pretty good. At the very least it had a narrative and a flow to it that many games have lacked, and that made it easier to explain to spectators. I only have a few quibbles, and they really are quibbles with the benefit of hindsight. All the same;

Visibility. The drawbridge, portcullis and sally port were simply too hard to see around, over or through. The drawbridge didn't need to be that tall or opaque and the sallyport didn't need to be opaque at all. The portcullis is alright, but it's still huge.

Other things that were transparent would have benefited from some tinting or other way to help make them visible; the dividers on the batter are nigh on impossible to see from across the field. I know that the GDC said that visibility was part of the challenge, but that strikes me as retconning. There's no way they set out to make a game that obstructed driver visibility so much on purpose. They wanted a draw bridge that looked like a draw bridge and only after they got it did notice what it did to visibility.

The secret passage was probably not a great idea. I get what they were trying to do, but what it turned into was just a way for more fouls to get incurred. It seems like the GDC frequently creates these sorts of 'protected' alleys that require piles of rules to make work. I'm not sure what the better solution would have been.

Those are really the only issues that stood out in my mind. Other things, like refs unevenly calling penalties for flipping or whatever, apply to all games in FIRST.

[jvriezen]

Originally Posted by Drakxii

Sorry remember the rule wrong, it still should be a larger overlap then 1 inch.

Since bumpers are 5" +- 1/2", two bots with 4.5" bumpers placed high/low respectively could have 0" of overlap.

[techhelpbb]

Animatronic dragon with pyrotechnics.

[MooreteP]

[GeeTwo]

Caveat: before any edits, this is all based on reading only OP, not any follow-up posts. At the risk of redundancy, let me plow ahead:

• After the one-dimensional challenge of Aerial Assist and the snoozer that was Recycle Rush, the bar was pretty low - and the GDC capitalized on that both literally and figuratively. (B'dup bup psssh)
• This was absolutely the best engineering challenge in my 4-1/2 years, and appears to be on the short list going all the way back to 1992. The low bar and the climb work against each other. High goal vs low goal is a real design question. Teams can earn exactly as many non-competitive ranking points as they can in competitive ranking points, giving the challenge both a "solid floor" as well as an "open ceiling".
• Most of the good games are based on a current olympic, professional, or varsity sport. Stronghold was NOT. This makes it even more impressive that someone who walked in off the street could "get it" in fifty words: "You score a breach point by crossing four of those five defenses going towards the tower twice each, and a Tower capture point for putting eight boulders in the tower goals and getting three robots on the platform. Two more points for doing these things BETTER than the other alliance."
• To find negative issues, I have to intentionally look for them. Most of them were handled in team updates; the remainder basically come down to inconsistent foul calls across events.

I definitely give the GDC an "A" this year.

[logank013]

I've said this since week 3 to my team mates but we'll see how others feel about this. I'd change the ranking point system slightly. This years ranking system was far better than just W-L-T, but it still caused some problems in Indiana in my opinion. Breaching became the guaranteed point for every match (only missed a few times in quals at IN DCMP). Capturing happened 79 out of 124 possible times (63.7%) at IN DCMP too. Much of the ranking system became a who has the best schedule (who can win the most) and caused some odd results.

Adding onto my issues with the ranking system, I thought we should add in the component of winning margin somehow. Odds are, the team that wins every match by 40 points is probably better than the robot that barely wins every match. A solution one of my team members had was adding another RP for every 30 points you won by (not joint, per match.). So if you won your match by 60 points, you added 2 more ranking points. If you won two matches by 45 points, you would not add the winning margins together to get 3 more RPs. It would be only 2 since each happened in a different match.

Finally, I think to get the capture ranking point, only your robot has to be on the batter. So in quals, if your tower strength was at 0 or less, you'd get the capture RP by your robot on the batter. So if in a match, an alliance wins and gets the breach, that is 3 RPs. The fourth RP gets added if your robot is on the batter. So if team A and Team B are on the batter and Team C rolls off, Team A and B would get 4 RPs for that match while Team C got 3 RPs for the match instead of all three teams getting only 3 RPs. This would not change anything for elims. You only get the 25 points if all three robots are on the batter at the end.

[dirtbikerxz]

Originally Posted by logank013

A solution one of my team members had was adding another RP for every 30 points you won by (not joint, per match.). So if you won your match by 60 points, you added 2 more ranking points.

But this goes against ur complaint of teams just having lucky match schedules. What if a barely okay alliance went up against a super crappy alliance and won by 60 points. Does that mean they are a good alliance?

[logank013]

Originally Posted by dirtbikerxz

But this goes against ur complaint of teams just having lucky match schedules. What if a barely okay alliance went up against a super crappy alliance and won by 60 points. Does that mean they are a good alliance?

I definitely see your point but that is a one time scenario. The point of the winning margin RPs would be for teams that consistently win by 30 points or more. So say we stuck 2056 in a competition with a bunch of teams that can't even shoot a boulder. Then the teams paired with 2056 who would win by at least 60 points a match would have a 1 time 2 RP bonus where 2056 would have a 10 time 2 RP bonus. Does that make sense? So schedule would still factor into this but the teams that are consistently better than the rest of the field should still end up at the top of the field by earning those extra winning margin RPs. Does that make sense?

[dirtbikerxz]

Originally Posted by logank013

I definitely see your point but that is a one time scenario. The point of the winning margin RPs would be for teams that consistently win by 30 points or more. So say we stuck 2056 in a competition with a bunch of teams that can't even shoot a boulder. Then the teams paired with 2056 who would win by at least 60 points a match would have a 1 time 2 RP bonus where 2056 would have a 10 time 2 RP bonus. Does that make sense? So schedule would still factor into this but the teams that are consistently better than the rest of the field should still end up at the top of the field by earning those extra winning margin RPs. Does that make sense?

It makes sense, but in that case, if you stuck a crappy bot with 2056 (with the current system) ya they will get 4 ranking points that one match, but in most of their other matches they will only get 1 max, where as 2056 will get consistent 4 ranking points.

[EricH]

When strength-of-schedule is used as ranking, or to affect gameplay, life gets extremely interesting.

Witness: 2010's coopertition bonus.
Witness: 2009's G14 (loss of ability to score some number of points).

And FIRST has never used the difference in score to give blowouts a boost. They've preferred close matches.

[logank013]

Originally Posted by dirtbikerxz

It makes sense, but in that case, if you stuck a crappy bot with 2056 (with the current system) ya they will get 4 ranking points that one match, but in most of their other matches they will only get 1 max, where as 2056 will get consistent 4 ranking points.

In the current ranking system, getting 4 Rps is an easy thing to do in IN if you have the win. So getting extra ranking points based on margin would encourage more high goals than low goals. Maybe if we changed this to every 5 more high goals your alliance gets over the other alliance per match will earn you 1 more ranking point. I feel like it effectively does the same thing as the winning margin but is a little different.

I think the point I was trying to get to by adding in winning margin was to have more matches that had 6 to 2 ranking points rather than capping at 4 to 2. It makes scoring much more important. A team like 1024 who is amazing had issues with their W-L-T record hurting their rank at their IN events. In many of the wins, they could have boosted their rank by having winning margin involved. Does this still make any sense or am I just beating a dead horse at this point? Thanks for the feedback

[dirtbikerxz]

Originally Posted by logank013

In the current ranking system, getting 4 Rps is an easy thing to do in IN if you have the win. ... Does this still make any sense or am I just beating a dead horse at this point? Thanks for the feedback

No it makes sense . And ya I get what your saying. Something like this will have to be regulated on a event to event basis though. I understand how this can be useful at IN, but if this was done at a event like Bayou, than the entire system would just crash and burn...epicly.

[logank013]

Originally Posted by dirtbikerxz

No it makes sense . And ya I get what your saying. Something like this will have to be regulated on a event to event basis though. I understand how this can be useful at IN, but if this was done at a event like Bayou, than the entire system would just crash and burn...epicly.

Yeah. Agreed entirely. I don't know how accurate it is but I like to think Indiana is one of the best regions this year. Because of this, RPs really came down to W-L-T in many cases because the other two RPs were fairly evenly distributed across the board. But obviously in an area where teams are still struggling to breach, then the current system probably has no issues.