Breakaway Discussion

[Dillon Compton]

Originally Posted by Jane n Mike

Or to take a rather more extreme case, would there be any problem with two strong opposing alliances agreeing to engineer a high-scoring tie, under which each alliance would earn triple seeding points? This is clearly the strategy under which the two "opposing" alliances could jointly maximize their seeding points.

This will never happen. Let us suppose we have two dream teams on the field, they maximize scoring during autonomous and teleoperated modes, and both enter the last 20 or 30 seconds of game time with 30 points on the board and no penalties to confuse the matter.

Sure, both teams could be content with 30 points and be happy that this match was very beneficial for their rankings, but it is now incredibly advantageous for both teams to try to score at least one point more than their opponents. Let me present two scenarios:

1.) both alliances stick to the agreed upon terms. Each alliance ends the match with 30 points and each team receives 30 seeding points. Everybody is happy, right... wrong! because one of their team members points out later that if they had done....

2.) Red alliance trusts the blue alliance and didn't crunch the numbers, so they stop scoring at 30 points and wait for the match to end. One of the blue alliance coaches crunched some numbers during the match, and, at the last second has his driver score one last ball, resulting in a match score of Red 30, Blue 31. The Red alliance did well for themselves and they receive 31 seeding points- the match score of the Blue alliance. The Blue alliance, however, receives a whopping 91 seeding points - their match score, plus a coopertition bonus equal to twice the match score of the loosing alliance.



See? I think we all know how that would go - and it's a good thing! It will encourage fierce competition, especially between top-tier teams. Interestingly, I think this new ranking structure will result in a general surpression (but not elimination) of defensive activity during the qualifying matches (you want to make sure you win, but only just barely), and then a massive upwelling of defensive games during the elimination matches.

[Jane n Mike]

"Let us suppose we have two dream teams on the field, they maximize scoring during autonomous and teleoperated modes, and both enter the last 20 or 30 seconds of game time with 30 points on the board and no penalties to confuse the matter.

Sure, both teams could be content with 30 points and be happy that this match was very beneficial for their rankings, but it is now incredibly advantageous for both teams to try to score at least one point more than their opponents. Let me present two scenarios:

1.) both alliances stick to the agreed upon terms. Each alliance ends the match with 30 points and each team receives 30 seeding points. Everybody is happy, right... wrong! because one of their team members points out later that if they had done....

2.) Red alliance trusts the blue alliance and didn't crunch the numbers, so they stop scoring at 30 points and wait for the match to end. One of the blue alliance coaches crunched some numbers during the match, and, at the last second has his driver score one last ball, resulting in a match score of Red 30, Blue 31. The Red alliance did well for themselves and they receive 31 seeding points- the match score of the Blue alliance. The Blue alliance, however, receives a whopping 91 seeding points - their match score, plus a coopertition bonus equal to twice the match score of the loosing alliance."[

I think you have misunderstood the scoring. Per rule 9.3.5: "In the case of a tie, all participating teams will receive a coopertition bonus of a number of seeding points equal to twice their ALLIANCE score (with any assessed penalties)." So the teams that have engineered a tied score at 30 stand to earn a total of 90 seeding points apiece from that tie. The only incentive for one team to cheat on their agreement, aside from a single extra point, is to deprive the opponents of their 60-pt bonus. That could be a ridiculously expensive decision, as their demonstrated untrustworthiness would make it very hard for them to participate in future lucrative collusions.

Mike Dennis
Team 1719

[dodar]

Does anyone see any struggle this year for teams to be able to drive onto the platform at the finale time?

[viperred396]

Originally Posted by dodar

Does anyone see any struggle this year for teams to be able to drive onto the platform at the finale time?

I think this could be pretty hard to get up there because it is 20 in from the ground and even if you can get to the top of the bump you still have a 8 inch gap to get up there.

[Liu_yiang]

Overall, I think it's a good game. 2 problems with it though:
1: <R19> and Frame Perimeter. The 3 inches rule is an absolute beast to work around. The X-bot shall be remembered.

2. Hanging doesn't seem to have much of a point. In the last 20 seconds, wouldn't it be feasable to have a fast bot score 2 points and thus win the round? Hanging points are only for when all is said and done.

Other than that, I think they did a really good job with the game. I've been showing my non-robotics team friends the video for playing the game, and they are actually pretty interested in going to see it. Dean's homework is gonna be easy this year.

[dodar]

OK if you build your bumpers and back then with a frame but it is separate from your drivetrain, i.e. they arent connected by bolting them together or welding, would that be legal?

[johnr]

If the target is black and white, the floor stripe white and the ball is white, will the refs be wearing zebra shirts this year?

[viperred396]

Originally Posted by johnr

If the target is black and white, the floor stripe white and the ball is white, will the refs be wearing zebra shirts this year?

I also think it will be filmed with a black and white camera

[Pausert]

Originally Posted by johnr

If the target is black and white, the floor stripe white and the ball is white, will the refs be wearing zebra shirts this year?

You can still distinguish between the vision target by shape. Tracking relies on finding the eccentricity of the vision target, so I don't think this sort of interference will be a problem.

[mathking]

Mike is correct that the main benefit of the extra point is to knock three teams down from 90 to 31 points, since you would only gain 1 point.

However, playing for the tie is a very difficult proposition. First off, you likely won't know for sure who penalties are on. Suppose you know that one penalty has been called, but are not sure who it is called on. Or even worse, what if there are 5 or 7 or some other fairly large odd number of penalties. You know for sure that a tie in points scored will not end up being a tie, but you aren't sure which team is behind. If you do not attempt to score a couple more for yourself, you risk losing out on a lot of points.

We should also remember that this is a robotics competition. It is not going to be easy to score one at a time, so alliances which are cooperating will probably just try to score a bunch of balls in the first half of the game and then equalize later. It may be difficult to insure a tie at this point. Say its 25 - 24 with 20 seconds left. You have the 25 and an agreement to play for a tie with the other team. Do you leave to go lift yourselves or try to score for them? What if both sides are trying to score that last ball for the side with 24 and they accidentally put in 2 balls? Then sticking to your agreement just knocked you from 73 points to 26 points. Or if you are the alliance with 24. Do you stick to your agreement and take 24 or do you lift one of your robots to get to 26 for yourself, moving you to 76 and the other side to 26. If you have an alliance with 3 really strong scoring bots, you may just decide to run up a big score for yourselves and then at some point switch to scoring for the other side to pump up your coopertition bonus.

I don't see anything wrong with cooperating for a tie, or cooperating for an n to 0 score. But I don't think it will be so easily done. I also don't see anything wrong with declining to participate in a cooperative tie. And again I will say that this is a really interesting game theory problem.