Do We have a trend here?

[NotQuiteFree]

I am proud to say that our alliance (492,957,1031) won the PNW Regional in this pattern:

1. Tie
2. Their Victory
3. Our Victory
4. Our Vic...

Ah....I see what you're saying...

[matt111]

in st louis we had the tie situation. in quaterfinals, it went like this:

1.Red wins
2.Blue wins
3.Tie (blue has 20 more points, but gets 2 penalties )
4.Tie (blue has 10 more points, but gets 1 penalty )
5.Red wins (both blue bots tip over )

and me being on the blue team. if we had last year's rules, or even this years rules minus one of the updates, we would have won based on point avg, margin of victory, or highest score, but thats how it goes. btw gg to 1018 and the rest of that team for 5 great matches (in a row...)

5 rounds to deternine a winner? Think about that. Is that fair to you or your opponent? After so many matches the chances of something breaking, or wearing out, or just shear exhaustion can realy take a toll. So the National Champion is decided by the luckiest team whose had easy matches, and the best robots have all destroyed each other because they have had 3 or four matches more than their luckier opponents.

Think about the nationals where we repeat this in both the division and national titles. I agree the two game only rule last year was bad, but only bcause the score was based on QPs not overall points. If you lost a close first round, it was impossible to recover. If the two matches were based on winning points, there rarely would have to be a third tie breaking match. I strongly suggest the rules for the nationls be changed to make the winner the best 2 out of 3 if the teams split. So first team to win two rounds, or after three games, highest points scored by any team, highest qp by anyteam, coin toss.

We want the most capable robot alliance to win. As it stands now, the best robot to have for the national champion is a battlebot that can hang quickly. It wins by knocking opponents over or disabling them, playing king of the hill, and hanging at the last minute. Opponents a good ball herder? (knock em over) a big ball handler? (knock em over) can hang? (knock em over). As a ref it is really hard to judge intention. Were they trying to prevent the other robot from scoring, or were they malicious? That is an almost impossible call to make.

Having teams play more than three matches to dermine the round is not in anyone's best interest. I don't know how we get the attention of the rules committee on this.

[KenWittlief]

I dont see why that would be a hard call to make?

if someone is trying to score and you get it front of them, get in their path, and block it or push them backwards, you are defending the goal

but if a bot is trying to score and you fly across the field and slam into their back or side your intent is obvious - you are not stopping them from reaching the goal, you are attacking the robot - esp obvious if serious damage results fom the impact.

kinda like if a hockey player skates up from behind and punches another player in the back of the head, knocking him unconscience, and then jumps on him and hits him again - if an attack like that is not even allowed in hockey, you would think an attack like that against a robot would not be allowed in FIRST

[Wetzel]

FIRST is here to inspire and excite kids (and adults too) about science.

FIRST has chosen to use a competition to do this.

So why is 5 rounds unfair? The teams in the finals have been through 6 or so more matches then teams in the quarterfinal. Teams that goto Na. The Championship in Atlanta will have been through at least one regional. Is it unfair to play more matches? If you want to determine who built the best robot, how is playing more unfair. If something wears out in that time, then it wasn't engineered for a long enough duty cycle.

The NCAA tournament. You have to play more games as you go on. If the team gets tired before another team, then the other team will win. The best will prevail and move on.

Like with the DARPA contest, the teams that failed early on didn't get far enough to run into the problems that teams later on ran into, but the collective knowledge and experiance from the challenge will allow the teams to do better next time.

Extra matches are not unfair, they are part of the challenge.

Wetzel

[Richard Wallace]

My team was on the losing side (Blue Alliance) of the 5 match quarterfinal in St. Louis. Much as I would like that match to have gone our way, I would feel very bad about the outcome if it had been determined by the original version of rule 7.4.4 (max pt total decides if tied after 4 matches). Continuing until one alliance has won two matches is easier for the audience to follow, and it favors the better built robots.

The audience excitement during our quarterfinal was equalled only by the final round. Exciting elimination rounds are good for our Regional and good for FIRST.

Any game can be improved, but I think the 2004 game is much better than the previous two years. Thanks and congratulations to the game design folks at FIRST.

Now if they can just continue the trend toward simplifying the rules...

[RyanMcE]

I'm from team 492... along with 1031 and 957 we took the regional, barely edging out a very powerful robot from team 753. Their robot had been all over the field - they tiped over the basket case robot in the semis, and tipped over our alliance partners in the first match (a tie) and the second match (which they won)... After a few false starts, however, they were dead in the water - which was lucky for us, but also shows why the rule is this way. 753 had an intimidating robot that beat up the competition and hung from the bar consistently. However, their drivetrain broke and another alliance won - so who built the better robot?

Team 492 ran into trouble... we took the timeout to fix our arm (it worked out for us, thank goodness for that rule)... an when 753 took their timeout, they got something replaced but it evidently wasn't enough. They also took their timeout, but the timeout can also be bad, since it gave them false hope and they fielded a dead robot in two straight matches, when they did have an alliance partner that could have taken the field and made for a much closer final match.

I have to agree with those saying there is no need to change the rules now. We built our drivetrain to be powerful but nice on the batteries as well (we ran out in the finals last year), so suddenly changing the rules so that there were fewer matches would be extremely unfair to us, and any number of teams that built less powerful but very robust robots. Let the best robot win, however the game determines the best robot. We don't need to change the rules to achieve some other outcome... As long as the rules are applied evenly across the board, the game will determine the winners without a problem.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by matt111

in st louis we had the tie situation. in quaterfinals, it went like this:
1.Red wins
2.Blue wins
3.Tie (blue has 20 more points, but gets 2 penalties )
4.Tie (blue has 10 more points, but gets 1 penalty )
5.Red wins (both blue bots tip over )

Actually, the situation in St. Louis is similar to most of the other times that the elimination rounds have gone on to a fourth or fifth match. It really comes down to this (and this is also true for the qualification matches): if you want to win, cleanly and quickly, then DON'T GET ANY PENALTIES! Penalties can (and many time do) make the difference between winning and losing a match.

There is a slightly subtle, but VERY important difference between this year's game and prior versions. In prior years, the rules typically stated "you can't do action xxxx during a match" but never really specified what would happen if you violated the rule. This year, almost all the rules are stated in the form "you can't do action xxxx during a match; if you do there will be a penalty of yyyy." Personally, I think this is a very good thing, and it helps remove a lot of ambiguity and inconsistency that we have seen in the past. Yes, there is still some, and things can still be cleaned up a little more, but I think this is a big step forward.

Originally Posted by DrBot

Think about the nationals where we repeat this in both the division and national titles. I agree the two game only rule last year was bad, but only bcause the score was based on QPs not overall points. If you lost a close first round, it was impossible to recover. If the two matches were based on winning points, there rarely would have to be a third tie breaking match. I strongly suggest the rules for the nationls be changed to make the winner the best 2 out of 3 if the teams split. So first team to win two rounds, or after three games, highest points scored by any team, highest qp by anyteam, coin toss.
...
Having teams play more than three matches to determine the round is not in anyone's best interest. I don't know how we get the attention of the rules committee on this.

Ain't gonna happen. The absolute worst think that FIRST could do at this point would be to change the scheme used to conduct the competitions. The robots have been built, they have been shipped to the competition sites, regional events have been held, games have been played, and we are nearly half way into the competition season. Changing the rules in as massive a way as you are suggesting would be an insane move for FIRST to make.

Plus, who says that having teams play just three rounds is some sort of panacea for ANY problem? Does anyone remember kick off? Does anyone remember the explicit and implicit message that FIRST has been giving this season? Does anyone remember the whole discussion about the necessity to BUILD ROBUST ROBOTS? If a team has built a robot that can just barely survive three rounds, but can't last through a fourth, then why should we be considering torqueing the entire competition process around just to appease them? Particularly when there are other teams that have listened to the ROBUSTNESS message, and designed their robots accordingly?

One more thought on this. From the audience entertainment/involvement standpoint, going into an extra "overtime" match or two due to a tie situation is GREAT! It very definitely adds to the drama of the event, and kicks the excitement level up a notch or two. Given the clearly stated objective from FIRST to increase the general public awareness and involvement, and to make the competitions more attractive to the public and mass media, this is a very good thing. The "unwashed masses" love to see the sort of extended play, sudden death, tie-breaker overtime matches that these opportunities create. It draws them in, helps make fans of them, and opens the door a little bit for FIRST to expand their message. Conversely, having the final game of an elimination match decided by the flip of a coin is about as boring and anti-climatic a way to determine a winner as I could possibly imagine.

Alan, I have read your messages on this topic (all of them, on this and other forii), but with all due respect, I gotta disagree with you on this one.

-dave

[KenWittlief]

I think it would be wrong to change the rules on who wins in the elimination rounds, simply because teams have designed their machines based on what the rules are.

your opponets points are important in the seeding rounds, but not in the elimination rounds - many teams have build machines designed to win the elimination rounds, not necessarily to ensure high points for the losing team

changing the rules now would be unfair to them -esp a change that drastic.

[Rick]

At Bae in one of the quarterfinals there was a tie. I may get a few facts wrong but bear with me on this. I forget the teams but they tied with one alliance having 1 win and the other having none. The tie showed how close the first alliance was to winning and how close the other alliance was to losing. With that in mind, both alliances played their hearts and getting all 4 robots to hang!


I think the race to 2 wins is a great format. To change the eliminations structure would have people crying for rematches and to be made champions. To have the CHAMPIONSHIP WINNERS decided on a COIN FLIP would be devastating to the losing alliance and the winning alliance would not feel accomplished.