Problem with Penalties

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

We built our robot to score, and play the game the way it was meant to be played, rather than to try and keep other teams from scoring.

http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread...hlight=defense

I don't like it either when matches are decided by penalties, but in my experience (Portland, Seattle and Atlanta... not that I saw ALL the matches at these events, of course...) there were a lot of teams that either failed to keep their robot moving in a counter-clockwise direction

That is not a requirement of the game - you are free to travel in whichever direction you choose within a quadrant.

...or decided that rather than playing the game they would try to stop someone else from playing the game. I can't blame the GDC for the poor choices of teams that do not make an effort to follow the rules. (And yes, I know these rules took effort to follow, and am very proud of our drive team for their efforts to stay within the rules and avoid penalties. It was challenging, but certainly not impossible.)

Again...

http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread...hlight=defense
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread...hlight=defense
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread...hlight=defense
ad infinitum

I can most assuredly tell you that playing defense is possible without obtaining an absurdly ginormous quantity of penalties. We chose this strategy in Atlanta and received a total of 2 penalties the entire event. Both were interference while hurdling. One was deserved; the other was a result of an opposing bot pushing their partner's hurdling bot into us while we were attempting to navigate around the hurdling process - the refs missed that one. It happens.

I am sure many others played D this year while keeping the penalties to a minimum.

All in all, I agree that while an abnormally high number of matches this year were decided by penalties, and that put a damper on the "fan friendliness" of the competition, penalties are both necessary "evils" and something teams can avoid with proper training, practice, and execution.

I do like the modification of G22 to require a more "blatant" clockwise move across the line in order for the penalty to occur.

I would, however, be willing to see penalties enacted in a different fashion... for instance a ten second deactivation of a robot that "goes backwards"... or seeing the refs provided with interfaces to the scoring system so that the penalties are recorded in "real time". But there has to be some significant consequence for teams who take the "easy path" of just blocking or interfering with a team that has taken the time and effort to design a robot that is actually capable of playing the game.

http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread...hlight=defense
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread...hlight=defense
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread...hlight=defense
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread...hlight=defense
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread...hlight=defense
ad infinitum

There is a fine line between encouraging teams who are not as "capable" as others to step outside their comfort zone and try new robot designs and having offensive teams offer up haughty, harsh criticisms of those simple, annoyingly effective robots who choose to play the game in a different but still legal manner than the majority of FRC teams. Then there are those bots who can play the game numerous ways and would like to retain the freedom to choose the style of gameplay they wish to employ for a given match....

There is a balance to be struck between eliminating all penalties, inviting havoc and chaos on the playing field, and having so many strict penalties in the rulebook that not even the 100% offensive bots (the ones who purportedly "play the game the right way") can escape them when they're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[GaryVoshol]

I will agree that <G22> penalties were easy to incur this year. I think that until the fields were set up in arena lighting settings, the GDC didn't realize the effect of reflections off the center barrier. However, there were a number of <G22> penalties right in front of the driver stations, and at the finish lines. Those should have been preventable.

All the other penalties, in my opinion, were totally avoidable. Because of the mandatory bumper rule, more robot-to-robot contact within the bumper zone was allowed. <G37> and <G42> were there to reduce contact which would be unfair, either outside the bumper zone or while hurdling.

And there were far too many teams that didn't understand penalties or other aspects of the rules.

[dtengineering]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

I can most assuredly tell you that playing defense is possible without obtaining an absurdly ginormous quantity of penalties.

True enough, and I'll leave the discussion of the relative merits of offense and defense to the many threads that you referenced.

All in all, I agree that while an abnormally high number of matches this year were decided by penalties, and that put a damper on the "fan friendliness" of the competition, penalties are both necessary "evils" and something teams can avoid with proper training, practice, and execution.

This was the main point I was hoping to get across. If you don't like the penalties... don't break the rules. Yes, that was occasionally difficult to do this year, regardless of whether you were playing offense or defense, but if the penalties were not significant and match-deciding then there would not be much incentive to pay attention to them, would there?

There is a fine line between encouraging teams who are not as "capable" as others to step outside their comfort zone and try new robot designs and having offensive teams offer up haughty, harsh criticisms of those simple, annoyingly effective robots who choose to play the game in a different but still legal manner than the majority of FRC teams.

My criticism is for teams that did not make sufficient effort to avoid penalties (especially if they then complained about there being too many penalties!) Teams that did not make an effort to avoid penalties do not fit the category of "effective", regardless of whether they play offense or defense.

If my comments were construed as a criticism of defensive machines and stragegies in general -- and I could see how they could have been -- then my apologies. It did seem, however, that many penalties were called as a result of defense, played poorly. I observed fewer penalties called as result of offense being played poorly. One way teams could avoid penalties was to simply focus on going counter-clockwise as fast as they could and staying away from opponents attempting to hurdle. In other words... attempting to score was an effective strategy to reduce the risk of penalties.

Jason