My case against <G14>

[BRAVESaj25bd8]

I have a few problems with this post.

Yes, an alliance could score on themselves, but that is certainly not professional and far more insulting then gracious. This is what I mean by "badly thought through".

I really do not see how it would be insulting to help the other team score points. If you're losing that badly, everyone knows it and the other team should understand that it is purely strategic and "big picture" thinking.

"Shenanigans" are far too easy. Yes, most teams here will behave graciously professional and avoid such temptations, but it is just too easy. Score a lot to disadvantage a team you don't like, or even the a team who will be partnering unliked team in their next match. Or, if you're going to lose, keep your score low to disadvantage everyone on the other team.

While this might be "easy" to do, as you said, it would not at all be graciously professional. I do not foresee teams purposely losing matches so that a team they dislike has a slight disadvantage in the next match.

I'm not a big fan of the "ranking score" system (where higher opponents' score=good for you) in the first place, but at least that encourages offense (good for spectators) and allows smaller teams to do more.

I believe the system is the way it is because it shows somewhat the caliber of the opponents played. Obviously if team A's opponents score 50 points per match but team B's opponents score 10 points per match, team A has had a tougher schedule. If two teams have the same number of qualifying points, why shouldn't the team who played tougher opponents get a higher rank? The system seems good to me (until the 4th tiebreaker of electronic coin flip ).

Overall, I disagree with your philosophy regarding the rule. I do not think it will keep teams from scoring a ton of points. The matches will not be less exciting simply because teams are afraid of the 2x or 3x score. Also, it will be very hard to lose all super cells. All 3 teams in an alliance would have had to have won by 3x in their previous match for there to be no possible configuration of human players which could get a super cell in play.

Example:Team A, B, and C are aligned for match 100. Team A won 97-17 in its last match, team B won 30-8 in its last match, and team C won 50-20 in its last match. Teams A and B both lose 2 of their non-moon rock playing pieces. Team C only loses 1. Therefore, team C could position its human player at either of the fueling stations and the alliance would have one super cell still possible. This is assuming they could not somehow get a super cell which the other alliance introduces into the crater and score it before the game ends. Sorry if this message seems to be rude or inconsiderate on my part, I just want you to see that perhaps it is not such a big deal and in fact might add an interesting element to the games.

[Dave McLaughlin]

I agree that it is not such a big deal, but I want to point out that if indeed you loose 3/4 EMPTY CELLS, you loss 15x3 points for the SUPER CELLS you cannot acquire and 6 points for scored EMPTY CELLS... I understand that with 120 balls on the field loosing 3 is like a flashlight in a cave, but three balls is still a loss.

[BRAVESaj25bd8]

I agree that it is not such a big deal, but I want to point out that if indeed you loose 3/4 EMPTY CELLS, you loss 15x3 points for the SUPER CELLS you cannot acquire and 6 points for scored EMPTY CELLS

I refer you to G14 (my bolding to emphasize)

<G14> CELL Count Modification – If the assigned ALLIANCE score for the last non-surrogate
MATCH played by the TEAM was more than twice (2x) the opposing ALLIANCE score, then
one EMPTY CELL or SUPER CELL will be withheld from the initial set of GAME PIECES
made available to the PAYLOAD SPECIALIST for the TEAM. If the assigned ALLIANCE
score for the last non-surrogate MATCH played by the TEAM was more than triple (3x) the
opposing ALLIANCE score, then a second EMPTY CELL or SUPER CELL will be withheld
from the initial set of GAME PIECES made available to the PAYLOAD SPECIALIST for the
TEAM.

You cannot possibly lose 3/4 of the empty cells due to the fact that each team can only lose two of its cells. This is a big deal if your team's payload specialist is in a fueling station because your opportunity for super cells is lost. However, if your team's payload specialist is in the outpost position, he or she will always have at least two empty cells at his or her disposal. Also, I remind you that in discussing what the opportunity cost is for losing an empty cell, it is the 15 possible points from the super cell acquisition and score, not those 15 plus 2 for the empty cell possibility because once an empty cell is exchanged, its two points will never be scored.

[Boydean]

I don't really like this rule eather. My thoughts on it is that one teams outcome in a match shouldn't have any effect with them on their next match. It also say that it punishes the next two teams in the allience with something that they might have had nothing to do with.

Example: "Team A" wins with a 2x score, but in their next match "Team B" and "Team C" on their allience had close score in the previous match. But yet they are the ones in the end that are taking the hit with "Team A". It also can go agienst a team during team selection during elemelnations. Who would want to pick "Team A" to go with them to elemanation when they lost a SUPER CELL from a previous match.

I have always believed that no match should exchange guidlines onto your next match. You can have a 2x blow out prevention rule to let them know that thats not the intentions of the game, but to punish them onto the next match. I don't think thats right.

The thought of losing a potional SUPER CELL isn't what really concerns me as much as what I stated above. Learn from a misake in a match but don't cury the misake onto the next match. More of a.. Learn from previous mistakes, but leave the past behind you.

[bduddy]

Perhaps I should ask something else-what is the good that this rule does?

Many people have suggested that it "adds strategy" to the game. Sure, I won't deny that. But does this game need the added "strategy" of sandbagging? Sandbagging is never fun to watch and less fun to do, especially for team members enthusiastic to show off what they made. And scoring on yourself? I mean, come on. How are you going to explain that to drop-in spectators or NASA TV viewers? (They do exist, you know. They're also one of the most important audiences FIRST needs to target.) And I don't know about you, but I'd feel better losing 50-10 then if the score was 40-30 and 20 of those points were own goals.

As for the "preventing blowouts" rationale, my thoughts on that can be found in the initial post. We are all mature enough here to take a big loss and consider how we can use it to move forward.

[Zach Purser]

Outscoring my opponents by 2x... this is a problem I'd like to have.

I would feel more comfortable if a minimum was placed on this rule for exceptionally low scoring matches.

There is also the chance for abuse by surrogates. A surrogate could run up the score and hurt their alliance partners in the next rounds without being affected themselves. But then again they could just throw the match if they really wanted.

GDC one fix that needs to happen, if a team is penalized from a previous match and they are a surrogate for the current match, their penalty should be postponed until their next non-surrogate match.

[BigWhiteYeti]

Say your next match was very important. You are currently up 65-30, do you take a penalty to avoid doubling? Encouraging penalties should never be the result of a rule.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by BigWhiteYeti

Say your next match was very important. You are currently up 65-30, do you take a penalty to avoid doubling? Encouraging penalties should never be the result of a rule.

That is another of the deranged "strategies" that is encouraged by this rule... or what if you are down 40-65, and against *insert your region's dominant team here*? I would hope that FIRST teams would not do this, but it would be really easy to *accidentally* throw a Super Cell over a bit too early...

And hopefully there are more people on now (as opposed to 3 EST ), so I'm eager to hear an actual reason why teams that win by a lot should be punished.

[cgredalertcc]

I agree. <G14> is, in my opinion, not in the spirit of FIRST. When has the game not encouraged us to do the best we possibly can? Also there is a possibility of double penalizing a losing team. Think about this teams 1,2,3 play teams 4,5,6 and the 1,2,3 alliance triples the score of the other alliance. Then the following match the alliance 1,2,6 exists: team 6 has just been PENALIZED for LOSING, because two of their partners are out 2 game pieces. Then we consider the possibility of that alliance losing and the additional consequences there. There are too many possible negative ramifications of this rule.

The 0 score argument is interesting as well. What if an alliance has 12 points and you have 20, but they were penalized twice during the match. Their score is now 0 and yours is 20 and that sucks, because you've tripled their score with 20 points

[XXShadowXX]

It was made to even the playing field which is in the spirit of FIRST, but since FIRST uses competition as means to achieve it's goal... It is a paradox, well lets solve the paradox and delete <G14>.

[BRAVESaj25bd8]

Alright, I really am hoping that you can all get every empty cell to the fueling station and then introduce every super cell EVERY match. As I said before, it will be extremely hard to eliminate all four super cells and impossible to eliminate more than half of the empty cells for a match. In that case, you have three aligned teams who all dominated their previous opponents. Perhaps you design a strategy which does not require the use of super cells or empty cells as a key component. That way, you will be zero-cell-proof.

[fordchrist675]

This could come into play at some point but in the rules each alliance is given 4 empty, and super cells so we would still have either 2 or 3 so thats still 4,6,13, or 30 you could still get. But i dont think there will be high scoring matches all that often where there are tripled scores and what not

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by cgredalertcc

I agree. <G14> is, in my opinion, not in the spirit of FIRST. When has the game not encouraged us to do the best we possibly can? Also there is a possibility of double penalizing a losing team. Think about this teams 1,2,3 play teams 4,5,6 and the 1,2,3 alliance triples the score of the other alliance. Then the following match the alliance 1,2,6 exists: team 6 has just been PENALIZED for LOSING, because two of their partners are out 2 game pieces. Then we consider the possibility of that alliance losing and the additional consequences there. There are too many possible negative ramifications of this rule.

The 0 score argument is interesting as well. What if an alliance has 12 points and you have 20, but they were penalized twice during the match. Their score is now 0 and yours is 20 and that sucks, because you've tripled their score with 20 points

Along those same lines... Lets say your robot alone, at it's best, can score 10 points for your team. Your two alliance partners in one match each score 60 points and, as an alliance, you triple the other teams score. The next match you play you're penalized, even though you contributed only a small portion to your previous alliance's amazing score.

[johnr]

I asked in the other thread and i'm asking here. How do i explain this rule to students and parents? Not the rule but the reason for it? How do you explain that you might have to NOT do your best? Where in the real world do i point to for an example? What will the kids learn from this?

[kc8nod]

Originally Posted by johnr

How do you explain that you might have to NOT do your best? Where in the real world do i point to for an example? What will the kids learn from this?

I'd say that, for this game, doing you best is something other than running up the score as high as possible in a single match.

G14 doesn't punish a team for "doing their best", it punishes them for not understanding the rule.