2016 IRI Rule Change Suggestions

[Chris Fultz]

Each year, we look at what official rules might need to be adjusted for IRI.

We have the benefit of seeing how the game is played, and we can adjust the level of difficulty (when needed) to match the level of play we see at IRI.

Gneral guidelines we use are that we won't make changes that are a major impact to designs, and we try to limit changes so that teams don't feel compelled to spend all of June and July working on their robot to meet some new challenge. We are also have to consider changes that impact FMS, automated systems, and referees.

As a note, we were already discussing the Tower Strength change to 10. We will see how that plays out at CHP.

[Eric Scheuing]

Change G28 so that robots can continue playing defense in the courtyard until the end of the match. They must leave robots on the batter alone, but before that robot gets to the batter, they're fair game.

[KosmicKhaos]

Originally Posted by Edxu

I think that I would remove the limitation on robot height while in your own courtyard. As it stands right now, defense as intended in the courtyard is effectively useless due to the multitude of teams with protected shots, and defense has all but entirely moved to the neutral zone.

Thematically, there's no reason why a castle's defenders would need leave the defended walls to sally out to meet the attacking force short of being sieged.

This gives teams the ability to play meaningful defense in their own courtyard, while providing another design challenge in being forced to be able to shoot at all 3 goals.

This could make the game more competitive in the way that you possibly eliminate shooting from the same spot every time. Agreed in the way that it could force teams to use more goals than just the center one.

[MechEng83]

As the season continues, Breaching seems to be less valued, as it happens relatively quickly with a competent alliance. Something that may add an additional level of difficulty would be to require all 5 defenses to be breached to get the rank point/extra points in teleop. I don't know if that messes up the FMS, but from a referee standpoint, it shouldn't be any more work.

[An Outlier]

Change the wording so that Robots shooting from the Outer Works are no longer protected.

This would help with the easy-to-capture towers problem, because defense could actually do something!

[Ben Martin]

I would make the sally port and drawbridge transparent. My preference would be to eliminate the portcullis and drawbridge completely, but that might be too drastic a rule change.

Some language to eliminate the transferring-balls-without-completely-crossing-a-defense penalties while still preventing the existence of 'defense-straddling bots' would be nice.

Some language to not penalize robots that inadvertently push a second boulder over a defense when crossing when the second boulder previously started in a defense would be nice.

I would also investigate incorporating a static or non-team-selected defense lineup to help with the space constraints (and matches would go very quickly without having to change all the defenses all the time), but I haven't done any analysis on the impact of this yet.

Add a ref in each human player station watching ball counts

[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.

[adciv]

Originally Posted by An Outlier

Change the wording so that Robots shooting from the Outer Works are no longer protected.

This would help with the easy-to-capture towers problem, because defense could actually do something!

To modify the rules to support this, I'd recommend this change:

Originally Posted by G39 IS

ROBOTS are prohibited from launching BOULDERS unless they are in contact with the opponent’s
TOWER or carpet in the opponent’s COURTYARD, and not in contact with any other carpet.

Originally Posted by G39 Revised

ROBOTS are prohibited from launching BOULDERS unless they are fully contained in the opponent’s
TOWER or carpet in the opponent’s COURTYARD.

Essentially, this removes the "safe shooting zone" of the defenses, but does not eliminate safe passage across the defenses.

[Logan Byers]

Randomly select the "audience" selection, but still have the suspense/cheer for "X", now "Y".

Make driving over a second boulder like pinning, 5 second count, then get smacked with a penalty.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by MechEng83

As the season continues, Breaching seems to be less valued, as it happens relatively quickly with a competent alliance. Something that may add an additional level of difficulty would be to require all 5 defenses to be breached to get the rank point/extra points in teleop. I don't know if that messes up the FMS, but from a referee standpoint, it shouldn't be any more work.

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

[CalTran]

Robots can break the midline during autonomous, but only for a new boulder zone. Put the boulders in their own 10" "zone" where you can interact with the entirety of the ball. Itll make for some interesting auto modes.

[Jon Stratis]

Breaching and captures shouldn't be automatic, as they are slowly turning into. Changing it to 10 boulders (or higher?) should help with captures... I would also, if possible, change the requirements for damaging a defense to 3 crossings instead of two.

[Edxu]

Remove the limitation on robots crossing Neutral Zone plane during autonomous. This encourages teams to develop more complicated autonomous programs that reflect the level of competition that should be at IRI.

Remove the height limitation of 4'6 in your own courtyard. This makes actual courtyard defense viable, and gives cheesecaking options.

If a boulder is in the way of a robot's defense crossing (eg in the low bar), don't penalize them for pushing it through. This eliminates those awkward situations where you have to outtake your ball and take the defense ball because of a weird case in the rules.

[Drakxii]

Let the alliance pick all of their defenses. No audience selection, no categories, and the low bar does not have to be in slot 1 (but has to be on the field).