Alternative to foul points: extra time?

[nuclearnerd]

Last week I had the opportunity to watch FC Barcelona crush their visiting team along with 100k friends in Europe largest stadium. At the end of the match, it struck me that we could import a rule from soccer (football) to FRC.

Right now, refereed infractions give the opposing alliance foul points. This practice kinda sucks on a few levels. The point value for each type of foul is hard for the GDC to judge. We've all seen games where the difference between win and lose is a dicey call. Worse than that, foul points prevent teams and spectators from knowing the score balance, since they are not tallied until after the buzzer.

Instead, I propose the following. Every infraction adds 10 (or 5 or whatever) seconds of "extra time" for the aggrieved side. The match may end at the buzzer for one alliance, but if the other alliance has been fouled, they get a few more seconds to play unopposed. This would keep the drama going, and make for an exciting new dynamic, instead of just waiting for the final score to pop up.

I recognize the idea needs some work. Event hosts aren't going to like the uncertain match schedule, and there needs to be something to prevent teams from just disabling their opponents (flipping or ramming) so that they can't use their extra time. But if these can be worked out, I think it's a fun idea.

Thoughts?

[bobbysq]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

and there needs to be something to prevent teams from just disabling their opponents (flipping or ramming) so that they can't use their extra time.

Clearly, every additional 5 seconds of a pin will result in 5 seconds being added to the clock.

[Lil' Lavery]

For most games, setting foul points is easy. You make the penalty for the foul higher than the points that can possibly be gained for committing the foul. You make it so there's no way to exploit the foul value for your alliances' gain.


Setting a foul time would be much more difficult to balance, in terms of game design. You could very well end up in situations where it would still be beneficial to commit fouls. If I know my opponent takes 30 seconds to acquire, load, and fire a ball, and I know bumping them in the protecting zone only gives them an extra 10 seconds, strategically it makes sense to bump them and force them to miss their shot. Even with the extra 10 seconds, they're unlikely to make up the lost points.

[rtfgnow]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

Right now, refereed infractions give the opposing alliance foul points. This practice kinda sucks on a few levels. The point value for each type of foul is hard for the GDC to judge. We've all seen games where the difference between win and lose is a dicey call. Worse than that, foul points prevent teams and spectators from knowing the score balance, since they are not tallied until after the buzzer.

I believe, and correct me if I am wrong*, that foul points are counted in live scoring once the ref enters them, assuming it is before the buzzer.

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

Instead, I propose the following. Every infraction adds 10 (or 5 or whatever) seconds of "extra time" for the aggrieved side. The match may end at the buzzer for one alliance, but if the other alliance has been fouled, they get a few more seconds to play unopposed. This would keep the drama going, and make for an exciting new dynamic, instead of just waiting for the final score to pop up.

I recognize the idea needs some work. Event hosts aren't going to like the uncertain match schedule, and there needs to be something to prevent teams from just disabling their opponents (flipping or ramming) so that they can't use their extra time. But if these can be worked out, I think it's a fun idea.

Thoughts?

How would an alliance know how much extra time they have? This would effect strategy about when to start doing the end game task. As of now, the timers on the two ends of the field cannot display different numbers (please note the "As of now", this might be able to be changed).

*Is this phrase necessary? I am sure someone would correct me whether I invite it or not.

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

The point value for each type of foul is hard for the GDC to judge.

Personally I have never found the foul points to be unfair and of all my complaints fouls being under or over valued is not one of them.

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

We've all seen games where the difference between win and lose is a dicey call.

Agreed however your solution (stated later) does not really solve this, I shall explain how when I get to your solution

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

Worse than that, foul points prevent teams and spectators from knowing the score balance, since they are not tallied until after the buzzer.

I have reffed FRC and I am guessing via this statement you haven't. Unless there is a call that happened near the end of the match, or the ref needs to change a call this is not true as foul points are shown as part of the live score as soon as they are entered. (which also brings up another issue with your solution)

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

Instead, I propose the following. Every infraction adds 10 (or 5 or whatever) seconds of "extra time" for the aggrieved side. The match may end at the buzzer for one alliance, but if the other alliance has been fouled, they get a few more seconds to play unopposed. This would keep the drama going, and make for an exciting new dynamic, instead of just waiting for the final score to pop up.

Now I understand that the proposed solution can not be retroactively applied to other games that were designed with fouls in mind but some of the mostly core ideas of an FRC game do not allow this:

How do you signal that one side has extra time and the other doesn't and how much that is?

When a referee calls a tech foul for something that is a regular how do you resolve it without a replay of the whole match?

What happens if someone commits a foul after the match is resolved?

What happens if I commit a foul when I have extra time and the other side doesn't? Do they get re-enabled?

What happens in a game with an end game during the extra time? This year some last minute batter runs could have been completed but if everyone was on the batter no one would move for several seconds .


As you mentioned the idea needs some fine tuning but with how far behind schedules most events run, and how FRC games are fundamentally designed I don't see this working.

[Jon Stratis]

While I personally hate when fouls decide matches, there are some benefits to them.

I've seen refs talk about penalties to make sure they got the right call - it's easy for the scorekeepers to change this at the end of the match, but how do you walk back extra time? Do you just say "oh sorry, our bad, we're taking away any points you earned in those 5 seconds (even if those are end game points that you probably could have gotten anyways)"?

And what about end game scenarios? This year on the batter, it would be easy for an alliance to manage that if they knew how much time was remaining (I'm assuming we could implement a technical solution to keep the time remaining updated for each alliance's drive teams). But other years it wasn't so simple. Take Logomotion, where the end game was literally a race - a team with extra time would have to do the end game, then come back to try to keep scoring with tubes. And there are rules like hanging this year - points given after 5 seconds or all objects come to rest - does the alliance that is "frozen" have to wait that much longer before their hang is assessed?

I'm not saying any of these are show stoppers, but they are problems that need to be assessed. Adding time introduces issues with the way we do things that has to be figured out, and potentially changes what sort of features we can reasonably have in our games!

[Lil' Lavery]

That reminds me, technically Logomtion had a variable length of match. After all 4 towers were activated, the match would end, regardless of how much time was left on the clock.

[Kevin Kolodziej]

An interesting idea, for sure. It is something that was discussed way back when I used to design Vex games for the Milwaukee Vex Programs (pre VRC). We had a slightly different implementation of it though: Disablement (we referred to it as "The Penalty Box").

An offending robot would be disabled for a duration appropriate to the foul (5 or 10 seconds), or perhaps the entire alliance could be disabled for serious tech fouls (whatever the given rules allow for or call for).

This eliminates the unknown time factor at the end of the match but still gives a strategic advantage to the victimized team/alliance. It is actually much more in line with the sports model (all penalties result in strategic advantage, not point advantage). It is up to the team to take advantage of the opportunity (uncontested shot, steal an item, etc.).

We never got around to actually trying it in a game since we didn't have a real field management system at the time, but it would certainly create for some interesting "power play" type moments. There would still be a delay in assessing the penalty from when it happens, but this pretty much happens in all real sports anyway.

[Chris is me]

One caveat of this is that you can go back and reverse the awarding of foul points, but you cannot undo extra time on the clock. You can't even really just choose not to count the last X seconds of scoring in most games either. So this would be un-reversible.

Now, it's debatable whether or not being able to be appealed / reversed matters to the GDC, which empowered refs with the ability to refuse to tell teams what fouls were even awarded for.

[Ari423]

I see this as a solution looking for a problem, and it itself has a number of problems. In addition to the ones mentioned earlier in this thread, there is the problem of the end game. In many years there is an end game that starts at 20s left in the match. If a foul were committed giving one alliance an extra 5 seconds, would the end game start for that alliance at 20s before match end or 15? If they both start at 20, the extra time would be basically useless because it has to go towards the end game. If it starts at 15 and the two alliances battle for the end game (like in 2011 fighting for the mini it poles) the fouling alliance would benefit? What would happen if a foul were committed in the end game? Or if a foul were committed during the extra foul time, would the other alliance be re-enabled or would the foul not count?

[GeeTwo]

Let me propose an adjustment: docking time from the offending team and/or alliance. This would provide the "offended" alliance with a number of unopposed seconds, but would not lengthen the match schedule. Depanding on how detailed the penalties could be applied, this could be assessed to an individual robot or a whole alliance, either at the moment of assessment, or as a shortened time at the end of the match, through a disabled state. As a way to penalize fouls in the closing seconds of a match, any penalties or portions of penalties which cannot be assessed against the offending teams may be applied as additional seconds for the offended alliance. That is, if red commits a "15 second" offense with only ten seconds left in the round, red is disabled instantly, and blue is given five extra seconds to balance the penalty. Assessing penalties this way should add only a few seconds to any given match.

[EricH]

Again, the question becomes: What if the referees misrecalled the rules (shouldn't happen, but can) or otherwise made a mistake and hit the wrong foul type? Do you rescore the match, replay the match, or make it unchangeable by anybody? (Hint: doesn't matter, somebody will take it to CD because the call didn't go in their favor.)