2016 IRI Rule Change Suggestions

[Chris Fultz]

Each year, we look at what official rules might need to be adjusted for IRI.

We have the benefit of seeing how the game is played, and we can adjust the level of difficulty (when needed) to match the level of play we see at IRI.

Gneral guidelines we use are that we won't make changes that are a major impact to designs, and we try to limit changes so that teams don't feel compelled to spend all of June and July working on their robot to meet some new challenge. We are also have to consider changes that impact FMS, automated systems, and referees.

As a note, we were already discussing the Tower Strength change to 10. We will see how that plays out at CHP.

[Eric Scheuing]

Change G28 so that robots can continue playing defense in the courtyard until the end of the match. They must leave robots on the batter alone, but before that robot gets to the batter, they're fair game.

[KosmicKhaos]

Originally Posted by Edxu

I think that I would remove the limitation on robot height while in your own courtyard. As it stands right now, defense as intended in the courtyard is effectively useless due to the multitude of teams with protected shots, and defense has all but entirely moved to the neutral zone.

Thematically, there's no reason why a castle's defenders would need leave the defended walls to sally out to meet the attacking force short of being sieged.

This gives teams the ability to play meaningful defense in their own courtyard, while providing another design challenge in being forced to be able to shoot at all 3 goals.

This could make the game more competitive in the way that you possibly eliminate shooting from the same spot every time. Agreed in the way that it could force teams to use more goals than just the center one.

[An Outlier]

Change the wording so that Robots shooting from the Outer Works are no longer protected.

This would help with the easy-to-capture towers problem, because defense could actually do something!

[Ben Martin]

I would make the sally port and drawbridge transparent. My preference would be to eliminate the portcullis and drawbridge completely, but that might be too drastic a rule change.

Some language to eliminate the transferring-balls-without-completely-crossing-a-defense penalties while still preventing the existence of 'defense-straddling bots' would be nice.

Some language to not penalize robots that inadvertently push a second boulder over a defense when crossing when the second boulder previously started in a defense would be nice.

I would also investigate incorporating a static or non-team-selected defense lineup to help with the space constraints (and matches would go very quickly without having to change all the defenses all the time), but I haven't done any analysis on the impact of this yet.

Add a ref in each human player station watching ball counts

[Hallry]

Get rid of audience defense selection.

[natejo99]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Get rid of audience defense selection.

I agree with this. There has to be some better way to go about selecting the defense in slot 3.

[Dan Petrovic]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Get rid of audience defense selection.

FMS automatically generates the audience selection and there's no way around it. The easiest way to get rid of it would be to randomly select between the two.

If they really wanted to, they could develop a whole new system, ignoring the print-outs and field reset lights, but, as someone who is planning an off-season of their own, I don't think it's worth the effort.

Originally Posted by efoote868

The low bar can only be weakened once the other 4 defenses are damaged.

I like this idea. We might take it for Mayhem in Merrimack!

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by Dan Petrovic

FMS automatically generates the audience selection and there's no way around it. The easiest way to get rid of it would be to randomly select between the two.

If they really wanted to, they could develop a whole new system, ignoring the print-outs and field reset lights, but, as someone who is planning an off-season of their own, I don't think it's worth the effort.

Does the FMS know the difference between defenses placed on the field? If I put a rough terrain in place of a rock wall, would it scream at me?

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by efoote868

Does the FMS know the difference between defenses placed on the field? If I put a rough terrain in place of a rock wall, would it scream at me?

Nope. FMS only know what's entered by the defense coordinator and the current audience selection. That's how it sets the outer works lights for the field resetters. It can not differentiate between the different defenses physically placed on the field.

However, if FMS is posting data (I haven't heard if this will be enabled for offseason builds, although it usually isn't), then the published defenses used in a match will be wrong.

[Billfred]

-Playoffs tower strength is set to the average number of boulders scored across all alliances in the IRI qualification rounds, minimum 10. I don't think any of us can predict how loony the play will be there, so let's just admit we don't know.
-No penalty for crossing the midline during autonomous, if the bumpers don't cross the far black line. (This should facilitate boulder-grabbing strategies without removing the overall protection intended.)
-Teams can get credit for more than one crossing in autonomous.
-Leave the drawbridge and sallyport alone. It's IRI, it's supposed to be hard. Bring a pole if you're that worried.
-Remove or greatly increase the height limit on poles, subject to some safety vetting (say, a get-through-the-doorway test and a pelted-with-boulders test). It's IRI, it's supposed to have something ridiculous on the field (and this might beat Suzy-Q).

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Billfred

-Remove or greatly increase the height limit on poles, subject to some safety vetting (say, a get-through-the-doorway test and a pelted-with-boulders test). It's IRI, it's supposed to have something ridiculous on the field (and this might beat Suzy-Q).

Interesting.

Though perhaps they could also ban all poles, suspend a camera above the field, then send the feed to 6 separate monitors at the 6 driver's stations?

[alicen]

Add 2 more "refs" to focus on the outerworks, and reverse the hinge side of the sally port. These two new refs would not need to call any fouls and would only need to know the wave off and what counts as a crossing.

As for actual adjustments to the game, I'll leave that up to everyone else

[S1LK0124]

This is something that a few guys on our team discussed that I thought would be an interesting concept/
What if for every 30 or so points a team wins by, they add an extra RP.
Example:
Both alliances score 4 RP
However, Red alliance scores 60 more points than Blue alliance.
Therefore-
Red Alliance: 6 RP
Blue Alliance: 4 RP
I would also like to add that this rule should be negated if one or more robots on either Alliance are shut off or lose COMs for any reason.

[Cash4587]

Leave all of the defenses in the same place for each round of matches so we can play more matches and make field reset easier. Don't change them until every team has played their first match, then until every team has played their second match, etc...