2016 IRI Rule Change Suggestions

[rich2202]

Tactical Flashlights must be on a switch for safety purposes. Accidental shining of flashlight near person (spectators included) is a technical foul, quickly escalating E&R with a red card foul.

[ollien]

Originally Posted by rich2202

Tactical Flashlights must be on a switch for safety purposes. Accidental shining of flashlight near person (spectators included) is a technical foul, quickly escalating E&R with a red card foul.

Would this include LED rings?

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Knufire

In addition, remove the batter requirement for captures. I'm assuming tower strength will be raised for IRI and putting that many balls in the tower is an impressive effort in itself. Removing this requirement will remove the chances of a weaker 3rd robot losing the alliance 25pts by not being able to make it back to the batter on time, and opens up more strategic flexibility within the last 30s of the match.

I adamantly disagree with this rule change, actually. The batter races are some of the most tense and exciting parts of the game. While it is frustrating to not make it onto the batter, it adds importance to the endgame and creates more opportunities for strategies and risk (last second scoring, hanging with an unreliable mechanism, etc) and I think the game would lose a LOT of its value if this were gone. This change more than most other changes would change the dynamics of the game a lot, and I don't think it's a positive change.

[rich2202]

Originally Posted by ollien

Would this include LED rings?

While bright, the LED rings do not focus the light into a tight beam.

That said, there were some teams with LED rings that would be better called round LED panels. Maybe LED rings with more than 20 (?) LED lights.

[EmileH]

Originally Posted by rich2202

While bright, the LED rings do not focus the light into a tight beam.

That said, there were some teams with LED rings that would be better called round LED panels. Maybe LED rings with more than 20 (?) LED lights.

What about requiring switches for focused beams that produce more than x lux of light at 6 feet?

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Knufire

I'd take this a bit further and replace the extra RPs for breaches and captures with their elimination point bonuses. I don't see a reason we should be playing a slightly different game between qualifications and elims.

In addition, remove the batter requirement for captures. I'm assuming tower strength will be raised for IRI and putting that many balls in the tower is an impressive effort in itself. Removing this requirement will remove the chances of a weaker 3rd robot losing the alliance 25pts by not being able to make it back to the batter on time, and opens up more strategic flexibility within the last 30s of the match.

These changes would make the game pretty boring to watch. This is one of the few games where a qual alliance that's totally outgunned actually has something to shoot for (and their fans something to root for), and it's because of breach/capture RPs. I think the reasons for keeping the latter have been well covered.

[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.

[EricH]

Might have been suggested already, but ditch the requirement that has one defense from each group on the field.

That alone will likely put the Group C's and the Portcullis out of play.

[Travis Hoffman]

I apologize if such lunacy were suggested already, but since it seems many are considering breaching to be an afterthought, and greater visibility is desired...

Remove all defenses entirely. Bare carpet. Leave the secret passages. Field resetters, rejoice. Cycle times would greatly decrease - more matches per team.

2016? Meet 2014. Declare a safe shooting zone where the defenses used to be. Meet 2012.

Increase tower strengths to 15...or 20.

[PaulJeffs]

Originally Posted by 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.

I like the game where RPs are used for qualification and then converted to points for eliminations. Raising the Tower strength at CMPs was a good idea, perhaps even a bit more would be good. Another thing might be to require all defense weakening to occur in teleop, effectively raising the number of defense crossing by three. Points could be earned during AUTO but the defense would not be weakened.

[piersklein]

Allow the possession of up to three boulders at a time.

Did someone say 6 ball auto?

[headlight]

Originally Posted by Captain_Kirch

There's enough space to gain excessive force. A bump is enough to disrupt any shot. What I saw out there was excessive. Look at the match videos from carson field. I don't want any to ever have to experience play like that again.

I think a large amount of the issues I saw on that field were from uninforced rules, but adding another layer of protection is some positive step as opposed merely blaming refs.

Also the definition of intent may be vauge, but I think we can all agree that giving up points or drawing fouls should count as intent. Maybe we can make that clearer. You can't accidentally tip a robot sitting in the outer works. You can accidentally push a robot into your own secret passage from your courtyard in the last 20 seconds. I saw both of those things happen in our field, and it needs to end NOW.

I re-watched some of the matches, SF1M1 did get a bit excessive, but overall I think most of the flips were due to the all terrain nature of the robots. The hits this year have much less energy than 2014, and the force is a side effect of a single defender trying to disrupt two or three robots at once, something you can't do if you're moving slowly or trying to brake before every impact.


I do agree with you about the intentional fouling of robots during the endgame and generally throughout the match, it was disappointing when I realized that rule was not really going to be enforced this year but we kinda just buckled down and dealt with it.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

I think the batter requirement makes the end game so much more exciting. 330's second self-righting wouldn't have been that exciting for the 5 point challenge nor would 1678's and 1405's near misses at challenging be as heart-breaking.

Despite losing twice in a row for this reason, I agree that this change would be bad. Einstein was the most set of most exciting matches I've seen in sequence. That the final came down to breaking a tie was most appropriate.

I suggest replacing the first tie breaker with the auto points rather than foul points (and we could never remember which way the tiebreaker went). Let the teams have more control rather than leaving it to the fickle discretion of the refs.