FIRST Rule Changes

[sgreco]

Originally Posted by RRLedford

Give me a fair analogy PLEASE!

Anaolgies are given to emphasize a point by comparing to a more commonly known situation. The point of an anaolgy in this case would be to show how ridiculous your rule change proposal is.

It seems that rule you are proposing is ridiculous and unecessary, and thus any analogy given would seem ridiculous as well...

[Andrew Bates]

No matter how you look at it, it is too late to make any major rule changes. Adding the 5 pts to the winning alliance wasn't huge but it did change how people play the game. What it didn't do was change how people designed their robots.

[KrazyCarl92]

My sports analogy would be Yankee Stadium in 2009. The field just so happened to be designed to allow balls hit to right field to leave the ball park much more easily and resulted in many more home runs for the yankees than their opponents, based in large part on the heavy left-handed batting composition of the team. The field was probably not made like this deliberately and it couldn't be anticipated that the Yankees would be so dominant, much like how in FIRST, while the game designers may have anticipated this strategy, they could not have possibly thought an alliance would score every 4-5 seconds. Now with Yankee stadium, they didn't make the team change it during the season because that would just change a part of the game in the middle of the season; FIRST should treat this situation likewise. I think we could all agree that even though the Yankees may have gained a slight advantage because of the balls flying out of right field, they were also a very skilled team. And in comparison, a 469-looping-bot an advantage based on the rules (especially when paired with a good striker), but kudos to them for coming up with a great design, making it happen, thoroughly anticipating how to stop others from stopping them (border-line within the rules), and executing their strategy painstakingly well. All FIRST can do is learn from it and make the rules less one sided in the future, although in reality anybody could have done this. The only thing I don't like about it is that it makes for a less exciting game.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by martin417

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.

A Team Update after that thread was posted confirmed it. And just in case you think no one on the GDC saw it, Dave Lavery posted in the thread.

[RRLedford]

One point that I don't think has been made is that MANY teams thought outside the box and carefully examined the looper scheme early on. They then decided this design would be truely bad for the competition to the degree that it could and likely would end up either disallowed or weakened by a rule change. Many of these teams anticipated the GDC would not allow the looper advantage to remain in place once it was clearly demonstrated how massivly it could alter the game.

Ours was one of these teams, and we assessed it as both too dominating a game killer idea AND one that, as a rookie team, we considered too risky to pursue. We expected back then, and we still do feel that the GDC would at some point, and still should do something to reduce (NOT ELIMINATE) the looper advantage. We had lots of valid reasons for abandoning the looper idea, and in talking about it with our team Wed., despite knowing what 469 has accomplished, they still believe NOT doing a looper was the right decision. It is mainly a philosophical perspective with them that the looper scheme detracts from the game play. Even though we had considered loopers to be an ultimate strategy, and one we were capable of implementing effectively, we did not, and still don't want to be, a team altering the game so dramaticly in the direction that 469 has done.

So as we view things now, the GDC, by allowing the looper advantage, has created a monster . The genie is out of the bottle and it's too late to get it back in. We never expected it to be allowed out of the bottle, and we don't like the way that it has impacted the game. Still, this is the way it has gone down, so we will deal with the situation. It's not the end of the world , we will not wine or complain. If we see any new strategies emerge for equalizing the looper advantage, we will be encouraged, and we will share any that we come up with too.
All the Best.
-Dick Ledford

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by RRLedford

One point that I don't think has been made is that MANY teams thought outside the box and carefully examined the looper scheme early on. They then decided this design would be truely bad for the competition to the degree that it could and likely would end up either disallowed or weakened by a rule change. Many of these teams anticipated the GDC would not allow the looper advantage to remain in place once it was clearly demonstrated how massivly it could alter the game.

Of the reasons not to build a loop bot, this was not my team's reason. I was more motivated by the fact that I thought it would be really hard to get a mechanism like that to work consistently.

In a competitive game, including FIRST, most people build robots to win matches. I don't see why you'd look at a design, go "this is too good, it'll make every match a shut out" and then not build it.

[JohnBoucher]

I appreciate you bringing this topic up. It worthy of discussion. I must say that I take exception to the phrase "game exploit scheme". Isn't having a different solution what all teams want? My elevator pitch to bring outsiders to a regional is that all 60 teams have a common challenge and there are 60 different solutions to that challenge. There are going to be teams that have very unique solutions.
Example: 2004 FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar. There was a 50 point bonus awarded for hanging on the 10' bar at the end of the match. We had one of those "game exploit scheme" ideas of moving back and forth across that bar and defending it. Only 3 or 4 teams total did that. We dominated our first regional and then got our butts handed to us once others understood what we were doing and how to defend it.

The competition is the big leveler. It will be defendable. We're looking for 1700 different ways to play this years challenge. That's why we keep coming back.

[GaryVoshol]

We often think of exploitation as being negative. Dictionary.com gives 3 senses of exploit - positive, negative and neutral:

–verb (used with object)
1.to utilize, esp. for profit; turn to practical account: to exploit a business opportunity.
2.to use selfishly for one's own ends: employers who exploit their workers.
3.to advance or further through exploitation; promote: He exploited his new movie through a series of guest appearances.

Taking advantage of game rules for the team's benefit is exploitation of those rules, but in and of itself that is neither positive or negative. It's how teams should look at strategy.

If a team thought any particular strategy or design would be negative exploitation of the rules and chose not to do it, that's their decision. That another team decided it would be a positive benefit is another decision. Neither is right or wrong.

[Lil' Lavery]

Dick,

Your whole argument is based around one core opinion that you have.

"Loopers hurt the quality of the game."

I, and many others, disagree.

Even ignoring the other fundamental differences and horrific flaws in your argument, the core that you base it around is a matter of opinion, not fact. Once you accept that, you'll realise why the GDC should not, and will not, change the rule you are suggesting to be changed.

[Rob]

Did anyone stop to consider that the gdc may have thought of this design/strategy while creating the game and purposly written the rules in a way that would allow it?

When reading over the rules that govern these areas it strikes me how each is worded in a way that specifically allows this strategy and design as long as the robot is built in a very specific way.

Perhaps sensitive to the (IMO well founded) criticism that the rules of Lunacy limited the creativity of the competing teams the GDC chose to leave an Easter Egg for us to find. Only the most creative and outside the box thinking teams could gain from it, and it is still not an easy ting to pull off.

Rob

[Kevin Sevcik]

I'll chime in as having though of this idea and prematurely discarded it as well. We figured it'd be too difficult to pull off consistently. Mostly because you're at the mercy of other teams sitting there looping balls. We figured hanging off the tower with a looping mechanism would leave us too exposed to being mangled by other teams. Clearly we didn't follow that thought through and examine how we could mitigate that problem. Very clearly 469 did; the wedge system and those vertical supports make this obvious.

At no point did we think to discard the idea simply because it was too good. Once the GDC allowed it in Update #2, we considered it fair game, but ultimately discarded it.

Fundamentally, trying to guess the GDC's intent/philosophy for the game and design to that is going to be pointless and frustrating to you on an annual basis. The GDC often isn't sure what their opinion is on certain matters. To co-opt Rob's argument above... Did anyone stop to consider that the GDC may not have originally considered this idea strategy and didn't know what they thought of it? And then the Q&A's on it came in very early in build and they had plenty of time to consider it, decide, and notify teams of their decision. And at a point when it wouldn't cripple a team that made that design choice.

So, it's much better to read the rules as written, find your strategies, and the ask a Q&A if any of them look too good to be true. As long as you ask an appropriately general question, the GDC is prompt about answering and others aren't going to leap to your exact design solution. There's really no risk in the whole process as long as you make sure your Q&A actually covers your design, but is couched in general terms so the GDC doesn't fire back with the standard "we can't comment on specific designs".

[ErichKeane]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

I appreciate you bringing this topic up. It worthy of discussion. I must say that I take exception to the phrase "game exploit scheme". Isn't having a different solution what all teams want? My elevator pitch to bring outsiders to a regional is that all 60 teams have a common challenge and there are 60 different solutions to that challenge. There are going to be teams that have very unique solutions.
Example: 2004 FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar. There was a 50 point bonus awarded for hanging on the 10' bar at the end of the match. We had one of those "game exploit scheme" ideas of moving back and forth across that bar and defending it. Only 3 or 4 teams total did that. We dominated our first regional and then got our butts handed to us once others understood what we were doing and how to defend it.

The competition is the big leveler. It will be defendable. We're looking for 1700 different ways to play this years challenge. That's why we keep coming back.

Gah, it was YOU! Assuming you are the team I'm thinking of (2004, NJ regional), we were hung from the bar in one of the qualification matches (one of our last i think) and a team that moved back and forth to defend the bar hit us seemingly trying to push us off the bar and bent a part of our lift mechanism by rolling through it.

We ended up doing some very temporary repairs (hose clamps and sheet metal!) and were able to keep it running long enough to make the elimination matches (we picked up 2nd seed!). Unfortunately our fix failed in the 3rd match of the 1/4 finals, causing our team to go home.

Faux anger aside, I was very impressed with the side to side bot, it was very great at defending.

[JohnBoucher]

Yes, It was us. It was a great regional. We had one of those OMG moments when we developed the shimmy bot.

Sorry for busting up your bot.

[ErichKeane]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

Yes, It was us. It was a great regional. We had one of those OMG moments when we developed the shimmy bot.

Sorry for busting up your bot.

Heh, no worries! We were restarting the team that year, so we only had 3 students and ~$700 budget and only our dads as mentors, so we were proud of ourselves getting as far as we did. It was all 3 of our 1st FIRST years as students, and our Senior years, so it was our one and only chance.

Interestingly (looking back) we had never blamed you guys or anyone else for us losing, we went home upset, but blaming ourselves for not preparing better. This is something I think I need to teach to some of my kids next season!

That Shimmy bot was nearly unbeatable, if i remember correctly, you guys won the regional, didn't you? At the time, we were just happy to be able to hang against you guys, we had to do some muscling in order to make it up that step against you and get our hanger on the pole.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by ErichKeane

That Shimmy bot was nearly unbeatable, if i remember correctly, you guys won the regional, didn't you? At the time, we were just happy to be able to hang against you guys, we had to do some muscling in order to make it up that step against you and get our hanger on the pole.

Almost unbeatable... except when up against 190.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5nnGGRi-94

Back from the days when defense on 'bots attempting to hang was still legal.