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.