Rookie Team impressions from Kettering

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by John Hooper

Well, if they intentionally broke the rule to get a ball or stop a team from scoring, that would be the proper 10-point penalty. Like in football, where accidentally grabbing the facemask and immediately letting go is a 5-yard penalty, but intentionally grabbing the face mask and hanging on is a personal foul, 15-yard penalty.

Anyway, many veterans of these competitions have let me know privately that FIRST does not alter rules just because they work against the entire purpose of FIRST. The important thing, apparently, is not to try to improve the rules to make the game more exciting and playable, but to grimly discipline young people into cautiously driving around a track like grannies, fearing above all making a mistake.

My bad, carry on.

Wow, you must have gotten hit pretty hard by G22!

If you think about it, there aren't really any other ways to accomplish the GDC's task of making a game with circular movement. You could change G22 to say "robots may not cross the plane of the line" with no associated punishment, but what happens if a robot does it anyway and decides the match because of it? Do you take the win away? Do you ignore it? Ignoring it results in other teams doing it, and now you don't have your desired circular game. Taking the win away is a more severe version of what happens now. You could yellow card them and not penalize points-wise, but then you risk having teams fully DQed due to line-crossing, which is worse.

You could assign a lower point value, but once the penalty points are less than 8, the incentive is to cross the line and grab the ball because the hurdle you can get with it is worth more than the penalty you'll earn grabbing it.

The GDC wanted a game with circular motion and without massive physical defense as seen in 2006 and 2007. The only way to 'motivate' teams was to penalize those that did not go circularly.

Also, the purpose of FIRST is to expose young people to engineers and engineering. Technically, the purpose of FIRST is more the experience you had in the build season, not in the regional. Having a questionable rule (and there are always questionable rules, even in the workplace) doesn't subtract from its mission of increasing awareness of attractiveness of engineering careers.