Major Issue in Team Update #1

[Nuttyman54]

Let me clear some stuff up about the reasons for my original post. I've been around a while, and yes I completely understand that in all likelihood, the scoring has not changed. But for a rookie team reading the rules, as Tristan mentioned, this is not necessarily the case. Barring rookies, rules are rules. I can think about how I believe they are intended all I want, but until the rules actually reflect that, I will never be 100% confident. Likewise, if this remains through competition season, I want the scoring to be enforced by what the rules say, not what we think they meant. That is the point of having rules.

The change in bridge scoring however, is not really my primary concern. I'm confident this will get clarified quickly. I'm more concerned with the other two implications. The wording of the definition for "balanced" and what it means with regards to a robot being allowed to hold a ramp balanced for its partners is not trivial. People can read the rules in different ways, and interpret them in different ways, and this is a strategic possibility which may or may not be legal.

How many teams thought when they read the rules in 2011 that ramp minibot launchers were legal? Not many, in fact several teams though it was definitely illegal. Same with 469 in 2010. I think it's fairly reasonable to say that most people, even after acknowledging that it was legal according to the rules, thought that it was not what the GDC had intended. Yet it was legal by the rules, and thus allowed to play.

This is why I am concerned with how the rules are written. One person's interpretation may be different than another's, but the ONLY thing that can and should be enforced is what is written. Anything else gives rise to a huge gray area that none of us want to deal with, especially inexperienced teams.

Personally, I really enjoy seeing the out of the box robots like 469, and I would love to see a team make a balance bot like 111 in 2001, but with the current wording of the rules, that is a completely unclear strategy option.

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

[G25] overrides the definition of balanced that is now provided. It says that if touching the bridge interfered with balancing, the bridge will be counted as balanced, no matter if it actually is balanced or not.

The point I am making is that yes, [G25] overrides the definition of balanced, but due to the redundancy, even if the bridge is balanced that is not wholly sufficient for points in [G40]. This leaves two options:

1) The redundancy is in place ONLY to deny bridge points if the opponent interferes (this is the only case that I can see where both conditions of [G40] cannot be met simultaneously)

2) The redundancy doesn't matter and the points are awarded for balancing, which leaves open what Chris and I pointed out: that there is then no place in the rules where it is stated how to determine the amount of balance points allotted due to the interference.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I have found that the intent of the rules are, in general, rather easy to parse, and that if you don't lawyer them, what you think they mean ends up being what they actually mean after they've been updated!

Just shows what an expressive language we have. It is difficult at time to be as precise as you need to be.

Yes, we all agree that we know what the GDC meant, but it's not what they wrote, and until they fix their language we have to go with the literal interpretation of what is written (which is the definition of "Lawyering the rules").

I'll recommend to Bill Miller that they bring an accomplished college professor of English onto the GDC.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

Just shows what an expressive language we have. It is difficult at time to be as precise as you need to be.

Yes, we all agree that we know what the GDC meant, but it's not what they wrote, and until they fix their language we have to go with the literal interpretation of what is written (which is the definition of "Lawyering the rules").

I'll recommend to Bill Miller that they bring an accomplished college professor of English onto the GDC.

One of my hats is 'novelist', and I used to do some technical writing both for game companies and for microchip manufacturers. The technical writing for the game companies was by far the hardest when it came to specificity!