How can you help GDC make this game better?

[billylo]

Let's get our creative juices going. It's week 1 and make no mistakes, it's a tough game for students, mentors, volunteering referees and others.

If you would suggest the top 3 changes you can imagine so that week 2-champs would be better, what would they be?

Reminder: keep them brief, supported by facts, and include expected benefits. It will help all of us digest the ideas.

Ready? Go!

[MooreteP]

1) Scorekeepers separate from refs.
However there would need to be a reconfiguration of the touchscreen input system, possibly adding two more screens. And you thought fixing the High Goals was expensive. They could always have a separate scorekeeper paper sheet like last year with the load cell debacle, but that may increase reset times. We used paper at the week zero Suffield Shakedown and it was quick enough, but it messes with the value of the Real Time Scoring. Ensuring that the pedestal lights up the moment a ball is scored in a goal is critical to the flow of the game.

2) Adjust penalty values.
Reduce G40 to a foul. Call possession of the ball by an opposing alliance.
I saw many instances of opposing alliances touching a ball twice or "herding" during defensive moves. This will improve the flow of the game by making it harder for a defending Robot to recklessly attack any Robot in possession of a ball.

3) More cowbell.
'nuff said.

[Wayne TenBrink]

Proposed wording for updated rules on inbounding:

<Proposed G21> ROBOTS may not extend outside the HUMAN PLAYER BARRIER.

The current rule prohibits extension beyond the SAFETY ZONE. The HP barrier is the 20" wide zone above the field perimeter pipes.)

<Proposed G40> TEAMS may not extend any body part into the FIELD during the MATCH.

The current rule prohibits reaching beyond the SAFETY ZONE.

G41 (no HP/robot contact, no HP/Ball/Robot contact) should remain as is.

This would make the HP barrier a "transition/neutral zone" where either robots or HP's could reach, but there could be no contact between them. You still couldn't lay a ball directly into a robot.

I think the same objective could be accomplished by re-defining the SAFETY ZONE to match the HUMAN PLAYER BARRIER.

[Tom Line]

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.

In addition, the rule regarding penetration inside the bumper perimeter needs to be enforced correctly. Damage needs to occur, or it needs to be clearly intentional to generate a foul.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

It must be emphasized to every single ref during training that one robot cannot force another to take a penalty.

I agree with that concept, but please cite the rule that allows me to do that. We don't have a "but he made me do it" rule this year.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

I agree with that concept, but please cite the rule that allows me to do that. We don't have a "but he made me do it" rule this year.

This one:

G14

Strategies aimed solely at forcing the opposing ALLIANCE to violate a rule are not in the spirit of FRC and are not allowed. Rule violations forced in this manner will not result in assessment of a penalty on the target ALLIANCE.

Violation: TECHNICAL FOUL

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

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.

In addition, the rule regarding penetration inside the bumper perimeter needs to be enforced correctly. Damage needs to occur, or it needs to be clearly intentional to generate a foul.

This is an exceptionally good point. A few times at events I've seen, BLUEBOT would get a possession foul (for 'trapping' or 'herding' the red ball), when REDBOT was in fact pinning them to the red ball.

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

G12 needs two penalty levels. I can understand a 50 point penalty if a robot picks up an opponents ball, but contact with the ball that is marginal should be a smaller penalty.

^This would fix that.

Similarly, low goal incursions and extending outside the field perimeter when being pinned to the goal/wall by the opposite alliance happened quite often, and sometimes the G14 violator was not penalized, and the incursion/field perimeter foul was assessed instead.

G14

Strategies aimed solely at forcing the opposing ALLIANCE to violate a rule are not in the spirit of FRC and are not allowed. Rule violations forced in this manner will not result in assessment of a penalty on the target ALLIANCE.

Violation: TECHNICAL FOUL

I think the suggestions about scorekeepers separately from refs is a great one, because it could let the refs focus on the interactions between robots. Several inside-frame-perimeter violations went unpenalized, even when they caused damage, simply because the referees 'didn't see it happen'. If there were a scorekeeper watching the ball instead, the ref would have been able to see the robot interaction. I think it would seriously improve people's impressions of the game if there were scorekeepers dedicated to the ball/assist/scoring/pedestal tracking and the refs could focus on the robots. (This would also help with the scorekeeping errors that are being pointed out in this thread - 125 points scored vs 66 recorded is a BIG problem.)

Originally Posted by Karthik

I'm going to be short and to the point here.

1. Scale back the value of the penalties. The scaling of penalties is completely out of whack when compared to the point scoring potential for an alliance. This is causing penalties to have an overwhelming impact on matches.

2. Allow for certain rule infractions to merely generate a warning for inconsequential actions. The warning will serve as a deterrent, and the match is not unnecessarily affected by an action which did not impact the result. If a team repeatedly performs the same infraction, issue an penalty. This would be similar to a yellow/red card system, but applied to fouls. Actually the better analogy is basketball where you're allowed to commit a certain number of fouls that don't affect a shot, before your opponent is awarded free throws.

Spot on. I've got nothing to say except 'seconded'.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Libby K

I think the suggestions about scorekeepers separately from refs is a great one, because it could let the refs focus on the interactions between robots. Several inside-frame-perimeter violations went unpenalized, even when they caused damage, simply because the referees 'didn't see it happen'. If there were a scorekeeper watching the ball instead, the ref would have been able to see the robot interaction. I think it would seriously improve people's impressions of the game if there were scorekeepers dedicated to the ball/assist/scoring/pedestal tracking and the refs could focus on the robots. (This would also help with the scorekeeping errors that are being pointed out in this thread - 125 points scored vs 66 recorded is a BIG problem.)

Yes this, 100 times over, we need dedicated score keepers.

During our Elimination matches at Hatboro Horsham, our scores seemed to be lower than expected, due to some missed auto points, and missed assist points, but we weren't all that concerned since we were winning matches. Then, in Final 1, the posted score was 79 to 59 in favor of the Red Alliance, even though both Alliances* had been scoring in excess of 100pts in each of their previous rounds. (*Semi 1-1, #1 alliance scored 99pts.)

After an intense post match discussion with the head ref, we found out that the initial assists on either end of the field were missed for both alliances, and that some of our previous "same zone" assists (Robot A passes to B in Z1, B moves to Z2) had not been counted as assists in earlier matches... Thankfully the missed assists would have only corrected the scores on both sides and not changed who won the match, so we went to Final 2 where the scores were correct, but it makes me wonder what else may have been missed through the course of the weekend.

It seems like the ideal solution would be to have one scorekeeper for each alliance, sitting at approximately mid-field and have them track the ball. We might not get 100% perfect results, but they'd have to be better than now.

[RoundTabler]

This game has potential to be great fun if these issues are addressed. A huge issue is the foul calls. We saw up to 150 points of fouls at GSDE - in the ELIMS! We personally got called on 2 50 point fouls in the FINALS!! Foul points decided many matches. The head ref was overruling the vast majority of fouls by the end of Sat (two tech fouls called on our bot were annulled in final match 1).

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Libby K

I think the suggestions about scorekeepers separately from refs is a great one, because it could let the refs focus on the interactions between robots. Several inside-frame-perimeter violations went unpenalized, even when they caused damage, simply because the referees 'didn't see it happen'. If there were a scorekeeper watching the ball instead, the ref would have been able to see the robot interaction. I think it would seriously improve people's impressions of the game if there were scorekeepers dedicated to the ball/assist/scoring/pedestal tracking and the refs could focus on the robots. (This would also help with the scorekeeping errors that are being pointed out in this thread - 125 points scored vs 66 recorded is a BIG problem.)

Libby, you've been a VC, do you think it's feasible to expect events to bring in ~2 more trained (and hopefully experienced) volunteers this late in the game? Question goes out to all the other event-runners as well.

[Mr. Van]

After playing in week 1, here are my suggestions:

1. Move the human player box back so that it is nearly physically impossible for a person to reach out into the safe zone (or the field perimeter or wherever you want to make the penalty start). This is a SAFETY ISSUE. You can't have a penalty which is inconsistently called be your safety system. Design the safety INTO THE FIELD SETUP. (This is equivalent to putting a guard to prevent access to a pinch point vs. telling people "be safe!"). One is true safety - the other is more safety theater.

2. Place a piece of clear polycarbonate over the pipes above the driver station. Balls bounced back out of the goals quite often. Since very, very few teams have a full regulation field, it was quite a surprise for many when their carefully tuned shot bounced right back out of the goal. Since the practice fields do not have these bars, it was pretty difficult to try to fix the problem.

The first change would ideally be made by making the pipes that separate the human player from the field longer so that the player was physically kept further from the field. I understand that this might be problematic (i.e. costly), but a very simple solution would be to move the tape marking the box further from the field. We are used to playing games (basketball, baseball, football, soccer, etc.) where the field is not defined by an invisible vertical plane, but by where your feet contact the field itself and keeping your feet in a zone is something that many more people will be able to DO as well as understand.

The second change is a simple set of several polycarbonate sheets placed over the two pipes above the player station. A few well placed holes and a few cable ties or straps and that should be good to go.

Both of these changes would make the game much more spectator friendly, and allow teams to play in a more "natural" way. They also do not require any sort of major re-writing of rules or penalties.

- Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Basel A

Libby, you've been a VC, do you think it's feasible to expect events to bring in ~2 more trained (and hopefully experienced) volunteers this late in the game? Question goes out to all the other event-runners as well.

I can only speak from my own experiences as a VC, but my intent is always to have extra refs and scorekeepers so that people can take breaks. (Example, if FIRST asks for 4 refs I try to have 5 or 6, so that at least one can rotate in and give people a chance to sit down/take a break, especially considering sometimes events can run through lunch.) In that situation, it'd be very easy to put the one or two extras on scorekeeping. If an event is right-on-the-number, then yes - that's definitely more difficult. I'd love to hear other VCs/event people chime in as well on this, but in my head it's doable.

[Ken Patton]

1. Need to free up the Refs to allow them to watch the action - not manage the sidelines and the input devices. It was sadly comical to watch how overloaded the hard-working refs were at Southfield, with keeping the iPad stands from tipping over, handing balls to human players, getting out of the way of reset workers, occasionally ducking from errant shots, watching the action, communicating to each other, and entering input into their iPads. It made for inconsistent calls because many infractions were unobserved, while other infractions were observed and called. Solution: scorekeepers with iPads set back from the field.

2. Improve consistency of calls by better training for the Refs in three specific types of infractions: opposing teams controlling another alliance's ball (please just be consistent), inconsequential robot protrusion outside the field (either call it all the time for all robots, or let teams get away with it when it has no impact on a catch or an inbound), and intrusion into other robots (Southfield was horribly inconsistent on this). Solution: better training for refs who are enabled by 1. to watch the action.

3. Improve consistency of the lighting up of the pedestals. The "reaction time" of the field seemed to range from instantaneous (no visible delay at all) to long (~~5 seconds), with the occasional situation where hundreds of people in the stands are shouting "ball!" and the refs hardly seem to notice. (We had an FTA tell us to take the ball off an unlit pedestal after waiting ~15 seconds one time). Solution: be consistent in how you light up the pedestal, every time, and move the pedestals to somewhere more visible to all (I heard someone suggest this yesterday - a great idea).

Consistency is the most important thing in my opinion.

Ken

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Ken Patton

It was sadly comical to watch how overloaded the hard-working refs were at Southfield, with keeping the iPad stands from tipping over, handing balls to human players, getting out of the way of reset workers, occasionally ducking from errant shots, watching the action, communicating to each other, and entering input into their iPads. It made for inconsistent calls because many infractions were unobserved, while other infractions were observed and called. Solution: scorekeepers with iPads set back from the field.

Ken, I WISH those touchscreens were iPads! Then we might not have to deal with lag, and maybe the pedestal issues would be resolved.

I also think that two more refs would be very handy, focusing on human actions, but that might just be me.

[Squillo]

This:

Originally Posted by Wayne TenBrink

Proposed wording for updated rules on inbounding:

<Proposed G21> ROBOTS may not extend outside the HUMAN PLAYER BARRIER.

The current rule prohibits extension beyond the SAFETY ZONE. The HP barrier is the 20" wide zone above the field perimeter pipes.)

<Proposed G40> TEAMS may not extend any body part into the FIELD during the MATCH.

The current rule prohibits reaching beyond the SAFETY ZONE.

G41 (no HP/robot contact, no HP/Ball/Robot contact) should remain as is.

This would make the HP barrier a "transition/neutral zone" where either robots or HP's could reach, but there could be no contact between them. You still couldn't lay a ball directly into a robot.

I think the same objective could be accomplished by re-defining the SAFETY ZONE to match the HUMAN PLAYER BARRIER.