Lesson Learned: The Negative

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

This is what the GDC got exactly right. If cheating costs five points, for example, and can give you a hurdle and line-crossing that is worth ten, then why not commit <G22> fouls all match long? The ten points was exactly the right amount.

Because its still minus points. Also After a hurdle and/or your robot crossing your finish line, in order for you to score again the ball and/or your robot have to cross your opponents finish line to be able to score again.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

Because its still minus points. Also After a hurdle and/or your robot crossing your finish line, in order for you to score again the ball and/or your robot have to cross your opponents finish line to be able to score again.

People are already complaining that the referees had some trouble with complex rules, and now you want to leave them more-or-less completely responsible to make sure robots are going in the right direction? <G22> meant that you didn't have to police robots going the wrong way visually -- fairly stiff penalties would do it for them. If teams didn't police themselves then their alliance partners certainly would have -- with a baseball bat.

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

Because its still minus points. Also After a hurdle and/or your robot crossing your finish line, in order for you to score again the ball and/or your robot have to cross your opponents finish line to be able to score again.

If a scoreable ball gets transported into your home quadrant and you're past the overpass, it may be worth it to go fetch the ball and score it, rather than do a lap. During your lap to catch up to the ball, it may get pushed forward out of your zone and thus you'd have to do ANOTHER lap to score it. Simply going backwards and scoring it for 6 points (if the penalty was 2 points) or 3 points (if the penalty was 5 points) would be worth it. After that, you're right by the ball and can pick it up and score normally.

Plus as Tyler said: if there was the possibility where doing a G22 would actually net points, refs would have to keep track of FAR more G22s. And you'd have people like me complaining that teams are breaking the rules on purpose. It is possible that you'd have refs giving out yellow cards for teams that repeatedly and intentionally broke G22 on purpose to score points (see Galileo QF 1-2 and the result of purposely breaking the ball-possession rules).

As an addendum: Penalties SHOULD decide matches. That's what they are there for. If one team scores more points but does it by breaking the rules, then they didn't win a match of FIRST Overdrive, they won a match of something similar to FIRST Overdrive, but not actually FIRST Overdrive.

[whytheheckme]

Originally Posted by Qbranch

Also, FIRST said at Atlanta that they will not be incresing the weight limit on machines to allow for the new control system, which, by the way, weighs about five pounds.

:cries:

[JesseK]

Lessons Learned:

Even when booked a month ahead of time, the last available flight out of Atlanta to Dulles airport for a group of 30 is STILL not late enough to stay through the awards ceremony & Einstein.

Offseason mechanical/build projects need to extend into all auxilliary support tasks more than they do into another robot.

[sammyjalex]

I'd like to see seminars, lectures and idea-sharing opportunities/ icebreakers at competitions which would educate students as well as create more social opportunity integrating team members into other teams and create a greater feeling of unity within the national and international FIRST community. I love the idea of the free hugs campaign and such activities that create a warm feel of community, but would also like more organized intermixing for those who are shy and chances for students to learn more techniques to engineer their robots.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by AmoryG

Anyways, the refs had never seen something like this and it took them like 10 minutes to discuess what had happend. I forgot what exactly were the calls, but I think one was for blocking and the other was for impeding the line. In this situation, a complete accident, where none of us can do anything, why should they call any penalties at all?

Can the refs judge intent? No. It might be deliberate, but they can't tell very well. Sometimes it is obviously deliberate, other times it is clearly incidental, but most of the time it is neither. So they play it safe.

In your situation, it would have been very difficult to judge.

[Pat Roche]

I really see two things this year that stuck out in my mind. They are rather small issues. The FIRST is I agree more seminars would be good. It doesn't necessarily need to be at the Championships either. Many people don't go to the Championships so at the regional level would be really good. The second thing is I would like to see a slightly more diverse game. A larger variety of ways to score would be really cool. Over the last few years I've felt the games have been one dimensional or two dimensional. Last year we could only score with ramps or tubes. This year you really could only hurdle/place the balls or run laps. I also do understand that increasing the ways to score makes the game harder to ref and harder for an outsider to understand at first glance so this might be a pipe dream . On a plus note though, I really liked how hybrid/automode played such a large part in matches. It really gave teams that little extra incentive to perfect that this year.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by Pat Roche

The second thing is I would like to see a slightly more diverse game. A larger variety of ways to score would be really cool. Over the last few years I've felt the games have been one dimensional or two dimensional. Last year we could only score with ramps or tubes. This year you really could only hurdle/place the balls or run laps. I also do understand that increasing the ways to score makes the game harder to ref and harder for an outsider to understand at first glance so this might be a pipe dream .

I completely agree. I think the biggest problem with this game was the one demensionality of it. There was really one scoring system that teams had to choose from and build--some way to hurdle. Yes, some teams did build hurders and pure lap robots, but not many of those teams made eliminations at the Championship (besides 148, who was picked last, were there any others?). Last year, there was two main ways to scores--rings and ramps, and we saw two drastically different types of robots that were both equally important and vauled. At the end this year, laps bots that just did laps, were almost pointless, because many of the top scorers were just as fast and got just as many laps while getting a ton of hurdling points. To make an impact, these lap bots had to play defense, which is something teams that build arm or shooters could do too.

[Pat Roche]

The other thing I noticed with that too is that you begin to see a lot of "prototypical" designs. I think back to when I was in high school and I would walk through the competition and all the robots were different. This year I walked through and it amazed me how many robots were remarkably the same. I guess the best example I have is team 121's robot. I saw a lot of robots that were quite similar to theres. Don't misunderstand me there robot was an awesome machine that is fully worthwhile to be similar to but I feel that some of the ingenuity within the FIRST community has been let out a bit. Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to take away from teams that have very unique characteristics (217, 1114...etc.) but I see a lot of the machines variety disappearing. Just some food for thought .

NOTE: This isn't designed to take away from anyone's achievements. I'm a firm believer in you get what you earn. If you won, you earned that win. You worked hard to be the best.

[Katie_UPS]

EDIT:
Forget I posted.
I was wrong.
>.<

[XaulZan11]

Katie, I completely agree that defensive is super important. My point was that teams did not build defensive robots. Your team, like many many others, went through build season planning to score and built an arm, correct?. For whatever reason, these teams abandonded their scoring and then played defense. I don't think there are many teams that built robots specifically to play defene. If so, please correct me. Under this assumption, the only valuable robot design would be one that can hurdle. Compared to last year, where teams that built ramps or ring scorers were both valuable.

[Katie_UPS]

Misunderstanding on my part; sorry.

You are right, no one intentionally built Defense-Bots, they built lap bots (or in our case; over-frictional arms that burn out motors/gear boxes (why we converted) and end up being lab/defense bots).

So design-yes.

I was in the strategy-section of thinking.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS

In comparison to the previous two years' games, this had a lot of bot diversity
Aim High- Collector/Shooters, (from what I saw) with the same basic design.
Rack and Roll- Arms and Ramps
Overdrive- Claws, Punchers, Kickers, de-cappers, Lifters, and lap bots (to name a few)

I think that is an oversimplification of past years robots. Last year's robots had:
For grippers:
Roller claws (see 121, 67, 148)
Suction cups (1086, 1987)
gripper that picked up from the inside (25, 1714)
gippers that picked up the inside/outside of tube (111, 1732, 1114)
grippers that picked up the outside of the tube (1038)
For arms:
Elevators (25, 1425)
4 bar-linkage (2056, 1114)
For ramps:
Lifters (1501)
Ramps (71, 47)
Combination of lifter/ramp (1816, 1114, 27)

This was just a quick list, I'm positive others can go into much greater detail and list many different types of grippers, arms, and ramps.

[T3_1565]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

I completely agree. I think the biggest problem with this game was the one demensionality of it. There was really one scoring system that teams had to choose from and build--some way to hurdle. Yes, some teams did build hurders and pure lap robots, but not many of those teams made eliminations at the Championship (besides 148, who was picked last, were there any others?). Last year, there was two main ways to scores--rings and ramps, and we saw two drastically different types of robots that were both equally important and vauled. At the end this year, laps bots that just did laps, were almost pointless, because many of the top scorers were just as fast and got just as many laps while getting a ton of hurdling points. To make an impact, these lap bots had to play defense, which is something teams that build arm or shooters could do too.

I myself never had a problem with diversity in the last two years, yet with what may be the most popular game in FIRST (Aim High) every robot looked the same, yet people didn't care, and it was the game most talked about. Also there were only three ways to score in that game as well, same with 2005, same with 2004 (I may be wrong about 2004, I wasn't around for it ) so talking about how one dimensional this game was, isn't right. The game that had the least ways to score was last year, not this year, and every other game before that, only had three ways to score anyways (whether it was worth a lot or not).

I myself loved how different the robots were this year, although there were many that looked very similar (121's design mainly) there was always something different about them (our drive system was completely different than 121's ) but really besides the fact that 121 showed a really simple design mid build season, and everyone saw how it worked and went "wow.. thats way better than how I would of done that" or "wow, our design is pretty close to that, but the way they did this and this, is much simplier" is the only reason there are so many roller claws, other than that, there are a billion different designs this year!

Edit: 2002 also only had three ways to score!