paper: Spanking the Children

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

I don't really know how I feel about this paper.

The thing that sticks out most to me is that it seems like Jim thinks 2011, 2012, and 2013 are examples of how a FRC game SHOULD be designed, while personally I found two of those games to be some of my least favorite (2011 for the completely overpowered minibot, and 2012 because objectively defensive play was next to worthless). I enjoy sports that celebrate good, clean, physical contact, like a hockey check or a football tackle or even an outfielder dive or home-base collision (while they're still allowed to do that). The excessive amount of "Safe Zones" in these three games made any physicality almost moot, becoming a game of who-can-score-the-most (NBA basketball anyone?). Personally I missed the robot collisions and rigorous defense of old. I find this game a breath of fresh air in that aspect.

Regarding tech. penalties, 50pt opposing ball penalties make sense to me as stated earlier in this thread, given the ball's ability to be worth up to 40pts at any given time. You want to make committing the penalty always worse than the action it prevents.
But, I feel that a G40 should only be a regular foul. Keeping it a foul maintains the safety incentive, but 50pt is awfully excessive in the name of safety. G28 should also be regular fouls, especially in the case of a robot (say red) getting pushed into scoring the opposing alliance's ball (blue) into their own (blue) goal by the opposing (blue) alliance! I saw this happen multiple times at multiple events and it still doesn't quite make sense to me why it's worth so much.

And the last thing (that actually kind of bothered me), Jim's been doing this for so much longer than I have (only since 2006), so I know there must be something (multiple things) about it that keeps him coming back, but there was so much negativity in describing every pre-Logomotion game that it almost sounded to me like he hated the games before 2011. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong.