How can you help GDC make this game better?

[DGMentor]

A lot of good action in Week 1. It appeared to me that the "strategy" of upsetting apposing alliance robots was somewhat successful resulting in survival of the fittest. Not sure if that meets the GP goal of FRC though. Maybe increase number of balls on the field to give the robots in waiting something else to do. Make your robots very durable and ready to take some big hits is suggested.

[Peter Matteson]

1. Make the human player box bigger and further from the field. A 6 foot tall hp can easily violate the line.

2. Add 2 refs to call HP violations. HPs are grabbing balls off the pedestal before it lights up in addition to violating the tape line.

3. Make it clear to field reset they are an integral part of the game and train them well before the start of the first match.

My suggestion to just make it better, are you listening IRI committee?

Allow multiple balls to be played at once in teleop, but make the trade off if you have multiple balls on the field you lose the bonus cycle. You will see real strategy discussions and variations on game play and end game if this was the case...

[Mark Sheridan]

Bring back the 2013's safety net. I hope FIRST still has some. It would ease the burden of returning the ball to play. Only the human players stand inside, and there are openings to impound the ball at the start of the cycle. Also put a net behind the goals to catch shots and make it easier for the volunteers.

This may not work, there are teams with launchers that would obliterate last years net.

[mgurgol]

Disabled robots may be used to gain an assist by having the ball deflect off them. An alliance is at a large disadvantage in gaining assist points if one of their robots become disabled.

Many matches in Central Illinois had disabled robots, and the alliance was only able to obtain a maximum of two assists.

[Carolyn_Grace]

Originally Posted by Mark Sheridan

Bring back the 2013's safety net. I hope FIRST still has some. It would ease the burden of returning the ball to play. Only the human players stand inside, and there are openings to impound the ball at the start of the cycle. Also put a net behind the goals to catch shots and make it easier for the volunteers.

This may not work, there are teams with launchers that would obliterate last years net.

The nets would been to be seriously reinforced physically. They fell down often enough when just a small frisbee hit them. Imagine a huge ball, going 30 ft per second? The whole system would collapse, especially if one hit a pole.

[themccannman]

Reduce G40 to a foul. Make the field barrier the line not to cross. It's incredibly hard for human players to keep their hands behind the safety zone. If you stand with your heels at the back of the box and stick your arms out straight in front of you your arms cross the edge of the safety zone, that's silly.

Refs need to be reallocated. They have too much to do and frequently forget to relight the pedestal until teams remind them.

[sodizzle]

As it's been stated before, the refs need to be better trained in certain situations like forcing a penalty and they need to freed of most of their responsibility. It's absurd to try and make the referees watch up to 6 robots and keep score and keep track of assists and keep track of penalties and keep track of pins and keep track of the pedestal and... the list goes on.

Scorekeepers are absolutely needed. The referees have too much on their plate and it was very apparent. Missed calls after missed calls, with a thrown in miscalled call. These people are volunteering. We might have all forgotten that recently.

[Anthony Galea]

Here's a new one, but it's not something game breaking:

Original text:

If an ALLIANCE’s BALL becomes stuck in an ALLIANCE’S ROBOT, the ALLIANCE may signal to the Head Referee that the BALL is “dead” by holding the yellow “DEAD BALL” placard against the DRIVER STATION acrylic.

I feel that if a disabled robot on any alliance is blocking the path to the ball, preventing a team from reaching the ball, a dead ball should be able to be called. It happened at least once during qualifications, where one of our alliance members lost communication about a quarter of the way through the match, and we spent the rest of the match trying to retrieve the ball. I know it isn't major, but we lost a qualification match due to that.

[pandamonium]

1.
I was looking at the different definitions of possession and this seemed to be ignored both for the alliance and when the opponent did it.

“trapping” (overt isolation or holding one or more BALLS against a FIELD element or ROBOT in an attempt to shield them).

Perhaps add a time much like the pinning rules like the ball needs to be held for approximately X seconds. Perhaps I am interpreting this incorrectly but I saw tons of robots pressing the balls against robots and field elements and no possession called.

2. G25
ROBOTS on the same ALLIANCE may not blockade the FIELD in an attempt to stop the flow of the MATCH. This rule has no effect on individual ROBOT-ROBOT interaction.

The defense in many cases was intense and if two robots were defending one it seemed to me to be bordering on blockading. I suggest that they expand on this to limit defense to 1 on 1 defense.

2 robots ganging up on one just is not fun.

3. add a coopertition bonus:
If an alliance achieves 60 or more assist points in a match they receive a bonus. The assist value seems too low in point values considering that is what the game is named after!

[YAK'ker]

as it was mentioned above:

"It must be emphasized to every single ref during training that one robot cannot force another to take a penalty. This has long been a core tenet of FIRST except in very special cases. Being pushed into goals, into opposition balls, and out of field perimeter by another robot should not be a foul."

I saw this happen yesterday....a 50 point foul. Same game, another robot intentionally capsized another robot with their arm, only a 20 point foul. I saw a LOT of battle bot action during the meet; especially in the final rounds. while it's exciting to watch, it's heartbreaking to see robots intentionally damaged in defense. What is this about gracious professionalism?

[Jim Zondag]

<G28>
What we have here is nearly the identical situation we had in 2008:
- The GDC chose a very large playing object.
- Because the object is so large, it is essentially impossible to obtain the object without extending beyond the bumper zone.
- In order to play offense in Arial Assist, teams must have extensions in order to pickup and/or pass the ball.
- because there is only one playing piece per alliance, many teams are assigned to pure defense roles.
- What we saw at Southfield this weekend was defensive teams waiting until the offense reached out to collect the ball, and then hitting them in an attempt to draw a foul. Often this worked. Once a defense team successfully drew a penalty for this, either accidentally or purposefully, we observed them seemingly doing this more deliberately in later matches. Honestly, who can blame them?; if a team built a robot which cannot score, and they suddenly realize that they can quickly score 50 points by ramming others at the right moment, they will modify their game play to try to do this again.

- So, when it comes to rule enforcement on G28, the key question is this:
Should we penalize teams who are simply attempting to play the game as designed when defenders attack them as they attempt to collect the ball?

- Team A builds a complex machine which can collect and throw the ball as intended by the GDC.
- Team B builds a box with wheels.
- The <G28> rule as it stands puts all of the risk burden on Team A and none on Team B. Is this what we want? Continuing to enforce this rule as we saw in week 1 will discourage teams from rising to the challenge of the Arial Assist game design. I believe we should reward teams who try to solve the problems FIRST presents to us, not penalize them for trying.

Enforcing this rule with respect for offense and defensive roles will help.
Defense team do not have to crash into other teams' collectors. It is quite obvious that many of them are willfully engaging in these collisions.
Obviously this is a tough thing to police. Certainly, enforcing it only in situations where "damage" occurs will help as others have already suggested. My own team got one such penalty this weekend, and ironically it was our robot which was damaged, not the defender in that case.
Better defining exactly what constitutes damage will also help. The FRC manual states: FRC is a full-contact ROBOT competition and may include rigorous game play. While Game and ROBOT Rules limit severe damage to ROBOTS, Teams should design their ROBOTS to be robust.
To me this means that minor, incidental damage is to be somewhat expected. There does not seem to be universal agreement amongst the refs on what exactly damage is. If a team makes a fragile robot, who's fault is it when it breaks?

Eventually, most of the reffing staff got it right in 2008, so I think this can be done properly in 2014. The Southfield refs seemed to be already handling this better on Saturday IMHO.

In addition, this penalty is much, much too heavily valued. 50 points is simply way too much. In week one, the average per team contribution per match was 19 points. Having a situation in which a single infraction costs more that 2 matches worth of team contribution is a complete game killer. This penalty should only be 10 points.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

3. Make it clear to field reset they are an integral part of the game and train them well before the start of the first match.

Field reset seems to never get that much respect or training... I was field reset for several years and read the rules closely, just as I always do, but there was very little training for those that haven't, and some of my fellow volunteers were quite confused over what they should do during the match and how. Even when the human players could have a big impact on the game, they weren't asking for conflict of interests forms, which seemed a bit off to me, too... I know I would have felt somewhat uncomfortable doing it with my former team on the field in a game where quick replacement of game pieces was critical.

[bitty]

1. Have 6 refs out ont the field rather than 5. Each ref will be assinged a bot to watch throughout the match and will let the refs catch g14.
2. Have scorekeepers to free up times for the refs because of the lag at the scoring tablet.
3. Have balls that go out of play be put back where they were tossed out instead of taking 5-15 seconds for them to be moved back to the driver stations.

[orangemoore]

Find 1 person per alliance to score possession for each alliance, the truss points, catch points and when they are scored.

So basically separate scoring and penalties. This would make the game a lot like last year where the refs are concerned by the rules of the game and not the score.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

Find 1 person per alliance to score possession for each alliance, the truss points, catch points and when they are scored.

Actually, only one person per alliance can do the end score. Two per alliance can input possessions and fouls, as well as trusses and catches. That's the current system. The problem is that they all wear stripes, and there are only 4 total (not counting the Head Ref) at the field at a time.


And I will say this: The IE field reset crew was quite good at getting the ball, regardless of color, to where it needed to go, very quickly, particularly by the end of Saturday, and they didn't slow down much today even with having to train a new half-crew or more.