IRI - Dates, Info and Rule Ideas

Originally Posted by EricH

It's harder because 85% of the 70-robot field is the caliber of 254 and 971. Not because the rules are harder. (The other 15% wants to be at that caliber.)

WOW. That's tough! I'll need to watch the webcast this year for sure!

[P.J.]

Aw man, I saw EricH was the last one to post and I was really excited to see his suggestion for rule changes. No such luck.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by EricH

It's harder because 85% of the 70-robot field is the caliber of 254 and 971. Not because the rules are harder. (The other 15% wants to be at that caliber.)

It's like shaving the cream that has risen to the top of each championship division putting them into a blender and serving the concoction up to the FIRST community for dessert.

[dodar]

or how about giving bonuses to shots made with the Kinect station and give bonuses to shots made while balanced on the bridges. You could also then say that any ball made while on the co-op bridge in the quals those points go towards both alliances' QS ranking score.

[pathew100]

Originally Posted by Chinmay

I'd love to see a change in the penalty for contacting an opposing alliance's bridge; it would be nice to see no penalty for this unless you contact the bridge while the opposing alliance is. This would get rid of the 9 pt fouls and also introduce the possibility of snatching 2 extra balls if you are careful.

I like this idea, for incidental contact. But I'm not sure you should be able to drive over the other alliance's bridge, for example.


My idea for an off-season addition would be to add two balls to each bridge at the start.

[Colin P]

Originally Posted by Chinmay

I'd love to see a change in the penalty for contacting an opposing alliance's bridge; it would be nice to see no penalty for this unless you contact the bridge while the opposing alliance is. This would get rid of the 9 pt fouls and also introduce the possibility of snatching 2 extra balls if you are careful.

Inadvertent contact for less than a second should be legal as long as no other robots on it. upvote

[Ziv]

Co-op bridge: Most (if not all) of the teams at IRI will be able to double balance with reasonable reliability. I worry that deciding the point at which you stop scoring and go to the bridge will create a sort of prisoner's dilemma. (Delaying 10 seconds from an agreed balance time is good for winning an individual match but bad for earning other teams' trust.) However, I feel like removing its functionality altogether would take away a core aspect of the game. I like the idea of getting three robots on a bridge in teleop, but we don't want to be unfair to the team using two robots on the co-op bridge. Given all of this, how about the following?

• Normal co-op balances are worth 1 QP. Maybe co-op non-balances are worth .5 QP, maybe they're worth nothing.
• Triple co-op balances are worth 2 QP and 10+n points to the alliance with two robots on the bridge to cover the opportunity cost, where 0 ≤ n ≤ 5. If the triple balance rate were 100%, n would be 0, but the maneuver carries with it a relatively large risk; it'd be nice to at least throw a tiebreaker the way of the team taking it.
  EDIT: Upon further reflection, n should probably be 0... we don't want any co-op balances sabotaged, and this reduces the chance of that.

Human player shots: They're cool, but I want to see robots doing things. If I want to see humans playing basketball I can watch TV . Only very slightly more seriously, 6 points is too much of a swing for such a luck-based event. On the other hand, giving bonus points to robots making shots from behind the barrier (not on the bridges, which give a height boost) would be pretty cool. However, it would be nontrivial to find the source of every shot without extra referees.

Bridge penalties: 9 points is too much. How about 3 points until there are 30 seconds left, then stock rules after that?

Technical fouls are worth 5 points.

[Gregor]

The removal of alleys. Makes it quite difficult to defend against the triple balance if all 3 enter from that side.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by Gregor01

The removal of alleys. Makes it quite difficult to defend against the triple balance if all 3 enter from that side.

I really don't see the purpose of having alleys anyway. Seems like a useless penaltymaker - I know why they were put there when the game was conceptual, but in actual gameplay they're just not good.

Get rid of the G28-G40 goofiness. Once again, makes sense in theory, but in practice it just invites negativity. Also puts some onus on the referees unnecessarily.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Gregor01

The removal of alleys. Makes it quite difficult to defend against the triple balance if all 3 enter from that side.

I remember an off season last year (Battlecry if memory serves me correctly) got really lenient with the zone incursion rules and teams abused the lanes all day long to get tubes they would not have been allowed to get during the season. You may not like the rules guys but they are there to stop teams from going crazy on the playing field and stopping all those awesome plays that gets everyone talking.

[Tetraman]

Idea #1 - Bridge Points alterations:

Qualifying: 10 points for one robot on your alliance bridge, 20 points for two. 1 Bonus qualifying point instead of 2.
Elimination: 10 points for one robot on your alliance bridge, 20 points for two, 40 for three. Bonus 9 points for the first alliance to balance their bridge first during the last 30 seconds of the match - so long as the bridge remains balanced till the end of the match. If the "first bridge" that was balanced becomes unbalanced, the bonus is not scored to any alliance. If both bridges were balanced at the time the 30 seconds begins, both alliances 'qualify' for the bonus, and if a team unbalances, the bonus is lost to them, but still available for the other.


Idea #2a though #2c - Rule Edits:

a) No "more than 3 balls" foul called during Hybrid mode. 5 second grace period after end of hybrid mode to clear out any extra balls before fouls are called.

b) Add two additional basketballs to the game, starting one on each alliance bridge.

c) Robots in Hybrid Mode get 15 seconds of autonomous use, and a robot controlled by the Kinect gets an additional 10 seconds. (aka, you can't just have one person stand in front of the kinect station and have 10 additional seconds of autonomous play, it has to be controlled via kinect.)


Idea #3 - Play the fourth robot

You aren't really supposed to like or want this idea, but if there was ever a year to have four robots on the field, this would be the year to give it a shot.

[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

I remember an off season last year (Battlecry if memory serves me correctly) got really lenient with the zone incursion rules and teams abused the lanes all day long to get tubes they would not have been allowed to get during the season.

You remember correctly about the rule change at Battlecry, but it wasn't just referee leniency and team abuse of the rules.

Last year, Battlecry made one of their official rule changes (for the 2011 game) to have the protected lanes end at the lane divider, instead of continuing to the tower. The change was an official rule change published and announced to all teams competing at the event, not just a leniency by the referees. Accordingly, it wasn't that the teams were abusing the rules -- they were just playing by the Battlecry-modified rules.

Actually, I think that Battlecry "shorter protected lanes" rule change was the best I saw all year for any of the off-season tournaments we attended -- it eliminated nearly all of the "accidental lane crossing" penalties. However, the rule change did tip the game balance a little more towards offense than defense.

Back to the theme of the original topic -- in general, I like rule changes (for IRI or other off-season tournaments) that are very minor tweaks that don't really affect the balance of the game but are instead to "fix" problems in the rules that weren't apparent before the game was really played but that are consistent with the original game design. I tend to like rules that get rid of "incidental" penalties that don't give a significant advantage/disadvantage to either team (this year's accidental touch of the other alliance's bridge for a 9-point penalty is a good example of a penalty that could be changed).

However, I really don't like rule changes that tip the balance to one kind of robot, as there are teams that designed their robots to play the original game, and changing the game rules often has the effect of essentially "playing favorites" to some types of robots.

For example, giving a 3-point bonus to all shots from the far side of the barrier would favor long-distance shooters over fender shooters, so I don't think such a rule change would be fair. Similarly, a rule change which gives more points for Kinect hybrid-scoring over non-Kinect hybrid-scoring wouldn't be fair to all teams, either. Add to that list rule changes that allow robots to hold more than 3 balls, or receive bonus points for balls scored from on top of a bridge, or

Part of the realization is that *any* rule change tends to favor some robots over others -- the trick is coming up with rule changes that really serve to help all teams!

Even rule changes that initially seem to help all teams equally are likely to favor some teams over others. For instance, increased match length will favor robots optimized for shooting rather than balancing, as increased match time gives more opportunities for teleop baskets, but doesn't give more opportunities for balance points. Longer matches would also favor teams which use less of their battery during a match -- however, those teams might have intentionally designed their robot to use most of their battery in a regulation-length match.

In sum, I tend to like rule changes which reduce annoyances in the penalties without affecting game play.

[Ekcrbe]

Originally Posted by Ken Streeter

Even rule changes that initially seem to help all teams equally are likely to favor some teams over others. For instance, increased match length will favor robots optimized for shooting rather than balancing, as increased match time gives more opportunities for teleop baskets, but doesn't give more opportunities for balance points. Longer matches would also favor teams which use less of their battery during a match -- however, those teams might have intentionally designed their robot to use most of their battery in a regulation-length match.

(emphasis mine)

This post gave me an idea: What about lengthening Teleop by 45 seconds, taking the match to an even 3 minutes. Also add a "mid-game" segment that takes the end-game rules, but applies them before the final whistle. My best idea is to give a "balance whistle" with 60 seconds left, at which points any bridge points currently earned are applied (possibly at a reduced rate like 7, 15, or 30 points for 1, 2, or 3 robots), and then the robots can get off the bridges to continue scoring until the endgame, when they can come back and score bridge points again.

[Nawaid Ladak]

It looks like things may actually work out and I may very well find myself n Indianapolis that weekend (summer classes are either all online, or end on Wednesday's).

I absolutely love the money ball idea. It sort of reminds me of the NBA's 3 point shooting contest. where the last ball on the rack is worth 2 points instead of one. Maybe inserting them at the 30 second mark and having them count for 2x the basket amount (2, 4 or 6 points). This could sort of have that super-cell endgame effect we saw in 2009.

I also think changing the number of basketballs used per match could make the game more interesting, Lowering the number could create a game similar to breakaway where ball control was key, or increasing the number of basketballs could have a plentiful effect and make the game play out more like Aim High or Lunacy.