FIRST Rule Changes

[martin417]

Originally Posted by RRLedford

Martin,
Give me a fair analogy PLEASE!.....

OK, I agree that the sports analogies I gave were not fair analogies to FIRST. Unfortunately, I can't give you a fair sports analogy because none exist. There is no sport in the world (except FIRST) where a brand new game is created out of whole cloth, published to teams, and played for the first time six weeks later. Any rule change that changes game play after the first week of game release (by this I mean early January) could have a major impact on a team that has based a design or strategy on the rules as published. The game-play rules have to remain static throughout the build and play season.

I'll try to give a FIRST analogy. Suppose in 2008, people complained that it wasn't fair that 1114 could score over 30 points in hybrid, and asked the GDC to allow robots to block in hybrid mode. That way, other teams could have a chance to win. It is a simple rule change like the one you are proposing. As it was, 1114 won every regional they attended (three of them), won the Galileo division at championships, and won on Einstein. They deserved to win because they made a robot that played within the rules, and that was, for all intents and purposes, unbeatable.

I don't understand why people are surprised at this tactic. I highly doubt the GDC is surprised. On Jan. 14th, this thread was started to discuss this exact strategy. Remember, the GDC is full of smart people. While it is possible that none of them foresaw this tactic as a possibility, it is highly unlikely. I might even venture a guess that they expected to see this, and wrote the rules to allow it.