2016 IRI Rule Change Suggestions

[Hallry]

Get rid of audience defense selection.

[natejo99]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Get rid of audience defense selection.

I agree with this. There has to be some better way to go about selecting the defense in slot 3.

[Dan Petrovic]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Get rid of audience defense selection.

FMS automatically generates the audience selection and there's no way around it. The easiest way to get rid of it would be to randomly select between the two.

If they really wanted to, they could develop a whole new system, ignoring the print-outs and field reset lights, but, as someone who is planning an off-season of their own, I don't think it's worth the effort.

Originally Posted by efoote868

The low bar can only be weakened once the other 4 defenses are damaged.

I like this idea. We might take it for Mayhem in Merrimack!

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by Dan Petrovic

FMS automatically generates the audience selection and there's no way around it. The easiest way to get rid of it would be to randomly select between the two.

If they really wanted to, they could develop a whole new system, ignoring the print-outs and field reset lights, but, as someone who is planning an off-season of their own, I don't think it's worth the effort.

Does the FMS know the difference between defenses placed on the field? If I put a rough terrain in place of a rock wall, would it scream at me?

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by efoote868

Does the FMS know the difference between defenses placed on the field? If I put a rough terrain in place of a rock wall, would it scream at me?

Nope. FMS only know what's entered by the defense coordinator and the current audience selection. That's how it sets the outer works lights for the field resetters. It can not differentiate between the different defenses physically placed on the field.

However, if FMS is posting data (I haven't heard if this will be enabled for offseason builds, although it usually isn't), then the published defenses used in a match will be wrong.

[Billfred]

-Playoffs tower strength is set to the average number of boulders scored across all alliances in the IRI qualification rounds, minimum 10. I don't think any of us can predict how loony the play will be there, so let's just admit we don't know.
-No penalty for crossing the midline during autonomous, if the bumpers don't cross the far black line. (This should facilitate boulder-grabbing strategies without removing the overall protection intended.)
-Teams can get credit for more than one crossing in autonomous.
-Leave the drawbridge and sallyport alone. It's IRI, it's supposed to be hard. Bring a pole if you're that worried.
-Remove or greatly increase the height limit on poles, subject to some safety vetting (say, a get-through-the-doorway test and a pelted-with-boulders test). It's IRI, it's supposed to have something ridiculous on the field (and this might beat Suzy-Q).

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Billfred

-Remove or greatly increase the height limit on poles, subject to some safety vetting (say, a get-through-the-doorway test and a pelted-with-boulders test). It's IRI, it's supposed to have something ridiculous on the field (and this might beat Suzy-Q).

Interesting.

Though perhaps they could also ban all poles, suspend a camera above the field, then send the feed to 6 separate monitors at the 6 driver's stations?

[alicen]

Add 2 more "refs" to focus on the outerworks, and reverse the hinge side of the sally port. These two new refs would not need to call any fouls and would only need to know the wave off and what counts as a crossing.

As for actual adjustments to the game, I'll leave that up to everyone else

[S1LK0124]

This is something that a few guys on our team discussed that I thought would be an interesting concept/
What if for every 30 or so points a team wins by, they add an extra RP.
Example:
Both alliances score 4 RP
However, Red alliance scores 60 more points than Blue alliance.
Therefore-
Red Alliance: 6 RP
Blue Alliance: 4 RP
I would also like to add that this rule should be negated if one or more robots on either Alliance are shut off or lose COMs for any reason.

[Ozuru]

Originally Posted by S1LK0124

This is something that a few guys on our team discussed that I thought would be an interesting concept/
What if for every 30 or so points a team wins by, they add an extra RP.
Example:
Both alliances score 4 RP
However, Red alliance scores 60 more points than Blue alliance.
Therefore-
Red Alliance: 6 RP
Blue Alliance: 4 RP
I would also like to add that this rule should be negated if one or more robots on either Alliance are shut off or lose COMs for any reason.

I have a feeling that this would just inflate the ranking points of top tier teams while creating a larger divide between the top and the bottom percentiles.

[S1LK0124]

I agree with you. You make a great point, but my reasoning was because IRI is supposed to be for REALLY a good teams so the point gap wouldn't be that great for most matches. The point behind the idea was that it would give teams somethin to work toward before the competition, such as making their cycle time faster and finding a way to score more points.

[Cash4587]

Leave all of the defenses in the same place for each round of matches so we can play more matches and make field reset easier. Don't change them until every team has played their first match, then until every team has played their second match, etc...

[Captain_Kirch]

These may have been said before, but I'll toss em out there anyway. I'm not saying put them all in, they're just possible changes.

Auto
Remove the up to 1 scored crossing in Auto. Or count up to one crossing for each defense during auto( this makes autonomous far more interesting and emphasizes coordination)
Make auto shots worth more damage on the tower
Robots can start anywhere on their opponents half of the field. (No spy bot rule)

Defenses/breaching
3 crossings to damage a defense
All defenses must be damaged for a breach
Eliminate defense classes, any combination of the 8 can be present.
Remove drawbridge or make the drawbridge transparent(no amount of driver skill can make up for being too short too see over the drawbridge.)
Low bar crossings don't count towards score in any regard, it would then just be an easy route into the courtyard.

Tower/shooting
Change base tower health
Make high goals worth more points
Make high goals worth more damage
(Low goal robots are a bit op in low to mid level play, probably not a concern at High levels though, right?)
Make scales worth more points
Make challenges worth less (or no) points
(Challenges are basically free and Scales are wayyyy too undervalued)

Allow alliances to pick their position on the alliance wall, at least in elims.

[Kevin Leonard]

I like some of these changes quite a bit.

Transparent drawbridge is a good idea. The idea of static defense arrangements is interesting. Perhaps just for quals? Make the blue defenses one set for all of quals, and the red defenses the other set.

Eliminations defense selections proceed as normal.

I'll likely comment later with other ideas, but these seem pretty solid.

[Ryan_Todd]

Picking on Billfred here, just because he has some of the best ideas I've read so far...

Originally Posted by Billfred

-Playoffs tower strength is set to the average number of boulders scored across all alliances in the IRI qualification rounds, minimum 10. I don't think any of us can predict how loony the play will be there, so let's just admit we don't know.

Yes yes yes. Playoff tower reinforcement is not only thematically appropriate, but also makes a lot of sense for adapting to the level of play we expect to see at IRI!
(Follow-up question: does the FMS already allow this, and/or can we trick it somehow?)
.

Originally Posted by Billfred

-No penalty for crossing the midline during autonomous, if the bumpers don't cross the far black line. (This should facilitate boulder-grabbing strategies without removing the overall protection intended.)

I like the idea of giving teams a bit more fudge room around the central boulders during auton, but the exact wording of the revised G13 determines whether or not this strategy accomplishes that without starting an RC war like last year. Perhaps the positions of some/all of the central boulders might be modified instead, so that a certain number of them are unambiguously allocated to each alliance?
.

Originally Posted by Billfred

-Teams can get credit for more than one crossing in autonomous.

I would definitely support this if we find a way to give each defense 3 health instead of 2, or if we can limit the awarding of breaches to after all 5 defenses have been damaged, or we find some other way to jack up the difficulty of breaching the defenses. Otherwise, I'm not so sure that we want to make an easy thing even easier.
.

Originally Posted by Billfred

-Leave the drawbridge and sallyport alone. It's IRI, it's supposed to be hard. Bring a pole if you're that worried.
-Remove or greatly increase the height limit on poles, subject to some safety vetting (say, a get-through-the-doorway test and a pelted-with-boulders test). It's IRI, it's supposed to have something ridiculous on the field (and this might beat Suzy-Q).

Certainly! There are plenty of ways to solve the visibility problem, and teams playing at the level of IRI should already have a good solution for this. It was an intended part of the game challenge, and I'd say it still should be!