Curie Semifinal 1 - 3, what happened?

[waialua359]

Perhaps, since the game planners (I believe 7 of them) take very seriously game design as well as many scenarios that may happen once THE game is designed, more careful consideration needs to be place on "proper" defense.
The nature and design of the game will greatly determine what kind of defense can/will be played. Maybe that should be looked at it greater detail.
It can be frustrating for teams when many of them with their communities pour their heart and soul into this program, only to be frustrated by outcomes that are unfortunate.
I also believe that more training for referees to be consistent IS necessary. Look at how much teams sacrifice and cough up just to enter a FIRST competition. For all the money that is spent, I would think that FIRST owes it to the program to look at each issue that comes up carefully and make announcements to changes/improvements that they will at least look into.
It is vital to teams staying in the program and feeling like they all matter in the outcomes and adjustments to future competitions.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Rich Ross

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=54562&

I can't help but think that the Drivetrain "Arm's Race" is not what FIRST is about. Some may feel this is off-topic, but if no robot was capable of exerting a force sufficient to turn the rack or to snap aluminum box tubing, then this wouldn't be a problem.

For the 2007 season, we used standard off the shelf Andy-Mark servo shifters with the same Brecoflex Supergrip Blue treads many teams have used in past seasons. I do not feel there was anything excessive or special about our drivetrain design. Many teams possess this kind of drivetrain ability - we just let ours push too hard one time too much, and an arm was horribly broken, yet it was still repaired in 15 minutes. We may very well have caused other teams damage during the 2007 season due to our aggressive defense, but none of it was apparent to us. If this ever happened, I encourage teams to even now PM me and let me know about it if we caused you undue mechanical problems, as we can't learn from our mistakes if we never know we made any. Other accidents happened that were caused by other teams throughout the year - but perhaps none so visceral occurred on such a visible stage? Again, mistakes happen, and sometimes someone does something dumb and incredibly foolish during the course of making that mistake. We apologize for those mistakes and we hopefully move on.

We did realize there was such a thing as too much oomph and overkill when we designed and builit the custom three-motor shifters and didn't have enough weight to complete the offensive part of our robot - the ramps. We designed the robot to easily climb other ramps, deploy (eventually) effective 2 @ 12 ramps, and play effective defense. I do not feel we overfocused on a single aspect of the game, and our weight budget was ultimately distributed appropriately enough.

I would encourage rookie teams of limited means to use a defensive base as a start, but not make that base the sole design objective for their build season. I do agree that we should raise the bar and ask them to tackle multiple game objectives if it's within their means to do so. But to some teams, just getting the robot to run around and be mobile is success and inspiration enough for them to continue in the program.

But back to one of the main points that keeps this on topic with the discussion, I do believe some kind of FIRST- or team-produced defensive tutorial would help everyone understand what constitutes proper driving and robot interactions and what is typically not allowed. If FIRST constructed the video's development much like the safety animation contest with a list of required criteria to cover, not only would they save on production costs, but perhaps many teams who participated in the contest would learn about safe defense before the build season even got under way? Like Adam mentioned, refs don't even know what to define as ramming. Wouldn't a visual demonstration involving 2 robots, staged according to FIRST's official direction, help refs and participants alike to understand the true definition? Everyone also calls for simpler rules. Well a picture (actually, 30 pictures a second or what have you) is worth a thousand words.

[Zuhaib Ali]

Originally Posted by FreedomForce

If your saying what i think your saying, then you can throw out Waterloo Quarter-Final 2.4 in which the ref's replayed the match off a camera and counted the points, ask karthik about this, i want to hear what he has to say about this

The refs replayed the cameras because both alliance captain representative agreed on it and i dont regret our team agreeing because the opposing alliance had beat us fairly. That was a good call and i appreciated that the refs took the time to sort it out or else it had potential for a big discussion that was already in the past.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Joel J.

Are you saying the refs are well qualified, and thus their rulings are just.. or are you raising a question as to what it takes for a ref to be well-qualified, given that there were a consistent (ly high) number of bad rulings across the divisions?

How many mistakes before THE question can be raised?

No, I am saying that mistakes and bad rulings were not a result of lack of experience. Rather, it is because as others have suggested, the rules are too complex. In addition, there are interpretations passed down from on high which can result in the refs seeming inconsistent from regional to regional, and from field to field at the Championships.

[Chris Fultz]

Originally Posted by Karthik

Just to clarify, Team 1114 is not looking for an explanation or any sort of public apology. We've received some fragmented justifications via private channels, and we're content to leave it at that. As far as I'm concerned, this matter is at rest.

As I have just spend about an hour reading mostly repeated information about who did what to who and how, along with various comments about referees, rules, FIRST in general and so on and so on,

and the fact that team 1114, quoted above, says "this matter is at rest",

and the expectation that nothing new can / will be added to this debate,

and all that will happen is more people will get upset with more other people


I request that another moderator please close this thread.

"honey, turn the oven off because this cake is done...."

[Steve W]

To allow for others to have their final say, I will close this thread at about 11:30 tonight. I also believe that there is a circular thought in this thread with not too much different being added. If people feel that on going discussion is necessary I will recommend a moderated thread where we don't have to monitor all day.

[nightdragon]

[quote=4throck;618954]I have to say I agree with this post. We were at Curie too, and as the competition went on, the play got more and more violent. Let's just say that no one was surprised when the Curie alliance got DQed at Einstein for playing the same way they had been playing. By not calling it, the refs allowed it to escalate. It is hard to say where the line should be drawn, but the rough play exhibited throughout the finals crossed it, especially when it came to ramming and pinning.

QUOTE]

Let me start by saying that we did not intentionally try to tip 71. That is not how we played during the matches at Curie, Buckeye, or Florida. Sorry for tipping you guys over. I would really like to find video of exactly how it happened. It definitely took away a match that could have had another great finish like in the second match...you broke our hearts!

I respect the refs decisions, but sometimes there are occasions where mistakes are made. Some can seriously hurt an alliance, others may hurt a teams reputation, but we have to respect them.

Last year at a regional, the previous match score was posted for ours. We protested and the refs claimed it was the right score. When asked to see the sheets that they wrote the scores down on, they could not find them. Later, one of our sponsors told us that they realized their mistake later and that the sheet was never lost. It puts a sour taste in your mouth, but we continued on the best we could.

[Lil' Lavery]

There were incidents of questionable nature on all four fields during the elimination rounds, 2 of which directly affected champions. The most egregious of which happened in this incident on Curie and on Archimedes. While I have not yet been able to find video (or get it from teammates) of the incidents on Galileo or Newton, but I will post video of 254 being tipped on Archimedes (no call). To make matters even more interesting, both this and the 1114 incident happened within 4:49 of each other (actually much less, closer to :45), as the same song is playing in the background (Message in a Bottle by The Police). It is quite possible that the Galileo and Newton incidents also occurred during the same time frame.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Z2XmhRZmMsM
[video coming soon, being approved by Youtube]

Most importantly though, we must not forget that what actually happens on the field is not what is important. Rich Kressley said it very eloquently in this thread:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=56958

[Steve W]

I would like to thank all who kept in check. This has been an emotional thread and I know feelings were riding high. Let's all get on board and read this tread: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=56958 by Rich K

[Steve W]

Just opened to clear up a very important point. It has been stated that at the Waterloo Regional that the Refs consulted a video of the match to clarify. I was unaware of this. When I returned from a few days away I had recieved a PM confirming my belief.

The Refs at Waterloo did NOT review any video during the event or playoffs.