[FTC]: Closed Loop Scoring illegal!

[PhilBot]

http://ftcforum.usfirst.org/showthre...-Answer-Thread

Section 5.3.1 of the Game Manual Part 1 asks teams to reflect on their Robot's design and the question: “If everybody did this, would the game play be impossible? If the answer to the question is yes, the design component is probably not allowed."

VELOCITY VORTEX is played with Particles that are Scored in goals and recycled back to the Playing Field for continuous game play. The Game Design Committee's intent is for open recycling, where Scored Particles return to random locations on the Playing Field Floor so that both Robots on an Alliance have an equal opportunity to access, Control, or Possess their Alliance's Scored Particles. A closed recycling game strategy that denies a reasonable opportunity for an Alliance Partner Robot to access, Control, or Possess a Scored Particle is not in the spirit of the FIRST Tech Challenge and is not allowed. Game play with closed recycling of Particles would be impossible and unfair to Alliance Partners. Therefore, Robot designs and/or game strategies that deny their Alliance Partner equal access to Scored Particles, is considered to be a violation of rule <GS2>.

[wilsonmw04]

I thought that would be coming down the pipe at some point.

[Wayne TenBrink]

I am not entirely surprised, but very frustrated by this significant rule change, and the way it was announced.

If they were going to ban closed loop scoring, I wish they would have done it explicitly and in the original rules. I can't believe that FIRST didn't anticipate this strategy. In Michigan, qualifying events start in early November. We are well into the design process and were just about to order parts when we stumbled across this "statement" (I wouldn't call it an "announcement"). How many teams are still unaware of it??

I believe that closed loop scoring would make Velocity Vortex a much better game. In my judgment, "closed loop" is the only way to make particle scoring a meaningful strategy. Without it, a strategy focused on autonomous and end game, skipping particles entirely in teleop, offers the highest scoring potential. With closed loop scoring allowed, the ideal playoff alliance would include one particle scorer and one capper/button pusher - a complementary alliance where each team does its task and the opposing alliance plays the game as they wish. Furthermore, closed loop scoring presented a fresh engineering challenge that we were excited about.

Furthermore, I think the logic used to ban closed loop scoring is flawed (or at least being applied very selectively and arbitrarily). Using the same logic, it would be impossible to lift the cap ball during end game. The very act of lifting the single cap ball denies the alliance partner the opportunity to do the same.

[mehrkam]

This is to keep someone from making a wall bot or something that expands to 3-5 ft wide to dominate the corner so they keep on scoring all by themselves. Teams still can zoom back and forth to get the recycled balls, but they can't cut off their alliance partner.

If such strategy does occur, <GS2> states that scored particles do not count. If they keep doing it after being warned, the refs can always give them a yellow card.

It will be interesting to see how many other variations or interpretations of this scenario comes up in the forums.

[MeBeMe]

I don't have an issue with the ruling. But I do have an issue with the making such a significant ruling after the game release and without heavy broadcast of this ruling. I agree that several teams will only learn of this at their initial competition and a full season's worth of their effort will be for naught. We just learned this 5 days before our first league event and now have to rework our entire game strategy in these five days. I think this reflects poorly on the design committee for not recognizing this strategy before release and on FIRST for how it was communicated. If the design committee feels there is a flaw in the game, once released they should live with it for the season (ala 2015 FRC-matches at highest level were decided in the first fraction of a second in a match due to limited scoring resources). We might look into VEX and evaluate their communication and process control for the future years clubs.

[bduddy]

Ah, the worst possible type of ruling: "This strategy isn't allowed because it's too good and we didn't think of it". Best made as late and as silently as possible.

[roboruler]

Look I feel that the way they communicated the new ruling was fine. There was the clause in the Game Manual that allowed this and this strategy was pushing the boundaries, even the RI3D teams expressed their expectation that this strategy would be restricted.

There was plenty of time to change strategy and redesign.

It would not be a good season at all if all the events were just won by robots with basically no driveteam interaction and just kept cycling with two motors. Heck, the robot didn't even need to be able to drive to be able to do this.

Even in FRC certain strategies or mechanisms are ruled illegal after teams have spent a lot of time developing them. You need to consider if your strategy will break the game.

[GeeTwo]

FIRST has regularly ruled against "closed loop scoring", at several levels. This shouldn't be a surprise to any veteran teams, at least.

[orangemoore]

I think that it is wrong to say that FIRST didn't think of this strategy before the season began. They want to make it clear that close looped scoring is not legal. No team posed the question they answered. They simply were making a statement in the Q&A.

I think it is also important to point out that FIRST has said many times in many forms (including the game manual section 1.6) that teams must stay up to date with the Q&A. There is only so much they can do to let teams know about new rules and updates. They really didn't change anything besides clearing any possible confusion about their intent.

[wgardner]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

I think that it is wrong to say that FIRST didn't think of this strategy before the season began. They want to make it clear that close looped scoring is not legal. No team posed the question they answered. They simply were making a statement in the Q&A.

As a point of fact, many many teams posed the question that they answered. I know mine did and I know several others did too. The GDC was responding to the overwhelming confusion about what was and was not legal. Check the ftc reddit to see the multiple discussions and debates that teams were having.

Originally Posted by orangemoore

I think it is also important to point out that FIRST has said many times in many forms (including the game manual section 1.6) that teams must stay up to date with the Q&A.

I agree with this statement: it has always been said that teams have to follow the forums. This is even say at the end of the game video every year.

That said, there are many many FTC teams that do not check the forum. Students are young. Mentors are rookies. People are busy. The forum has 100s of posts. This year, they even broke the rulings forums into many subforums, making it even more work to check them all and be up to date on all of the rulings.

There is only so much they can do to let teams know about new rules and updates.

Well, one simple thing they could do would be to release updates to the game manual only for major rulings that fundamentally affect the way teams design their robots. Some examples of rule changes that were only communicated in the forums that numerous teams missed are:

• 2016: no closed loop recycling.
• 2016: only turning the center vortex by touching it at 1 horizontal point, and turning it only at a rate less than 5 rot/sec.
• 2015: plowing debris, scoring autonomous debris by plowing, etc.
• 2014: no touching the ball tubes (even though it was shown in the game video).

Couldn't the GDC at least update the game manual with these major changes? If FIRST's goal is really to grow, shouldn't they take simple steps that minimize the confusion and frustration that teams experience?

We can all respond to MeBeMe's post #5 saying that they should have read the forum, but the fact is that the MeBeMe is frustrated and may leave the program because of the way rules are difficult to find and understand. Fixing the problem by making rare-but-important Game Manual updates isn't that much work. Why can't FIRST do it?

Originally Posted by orangemoore

They really didn't change anything besides clearing any possible confusion about their intent.

I respectfully disagree. They made a fundamental change to the game that resulted in teams completely changing the way that they design their robots.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

FIRST has regularly ruled against "closed loop scoring", at several levels. This shouldn't be a surprise to any veteran teams, at least.

[Citation Needed]

[MeBeMe]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

There is only so much they can do to let teams know about new rules and updates.

I beg to differ on this point of view. Once I register my team FIRST has all our contact information. A simple blast email to all teams about a game rule change or major clarification seems reasonable to me. This could even be a weekly alert so teams are prepared to see it. Rule changes, clarifications, etc. No updates this week, my alert from FIRST cold say "No updates this week."

I think by eliminating this closed loop recycling altogether, the game becomes very pedestrian and doesn't offer enough variety in game play strategy. For the entirety of the teleop period, there is now only one viable game strategy, that being the center vortex. I would rather have seen a ruling about how many particles can be controlled at one time or within a closed loop to de-emphasize the strategy but not eliminate it completely.

I believe teleop is completely devalued now and matches at the mid-level of play will mostly be won in auto 30 second auto period. Matches at the high level will be auto and end game/cap ball, still devaluing teleop. We'll just have to watch it play out.

[BSV]

Originally Posted by wgardner

That said, there are many many FTC teams that do not check the forum. Students are young. Mentors are rookies. People are busy. The forum has 100s of posts. This year, they even broke the rulings forums into many subforums, making it even more work to check them all and be up to date on all of the rulings.

We were getting frustrated with that last weekend before the first competition, but fortunately stumbled on their PDF file we could download and search through. It has all of the Q&A up-to-date (at least as of last weekend) in one place:

http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/d...-questions.pdf

Originally Posted by MeBeMe

I believe teleop is completely devalued now and matches at the mid-level of play will mostly be won in auto 30 second auto period. Matches at the high level will be auto and end game/cap ball, still devaluing teleop. We'll just have to watch it play out.

I'm not sure I agree with this. The best auto score at our QT last weekend was 85, and the best TeleOp score was 95, 55 points being teleop shots made by one robot (I think---they may have pushed the cap ball onto the ramp for 10 of those points, but I don't think so) + four beacons. That's Oct 29, and a team is already scoring 55 shooting by themselves in TeleOp and that was with only 4 of the 5 particles on the field.

You can only get 40 from a cap ball. How many shots will you be able to hit in 30 seconds with a refined, later-season robot? Like you say, we'll need to watch it play out, but it seems like if you play smart and put together a balanced alliance you can do well if you focus on one or two of those three things (auto, shooting, capping) if you get the proper complimentary robot. Although I think if you just do auto, even perfectly, it's not going to help much later in the season.