[FTC]: Closed Loop Scoring illegal!

[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.