Maybe I’m reading this the wrong way, but it only says possessions, not assists.
From the 2014 FRC manual… “ASSISTS are earned when a unique ALLIANCE ROBOT POSSESSES the ALLIANCE’S BALL in a unique ZONE”
That still remains, and thus as written, it doesn’t mean zones don’t count.
That’s a sound argument, however the definition of POSSESS (quoted below for convenience) makes no mention of any ZONES.
So the inference that this rule change intends to eliminate the zonal requirements that pair with possession to create an assist, seems fairly sound.
I understand that it helps the Refs out ALOT! but whats stopping you from a 3 robot line? 3 robots could push any defenders and they can probably cycle fast enough to skip the truss.
Dont like that rule but agree with all others. Love the 4th ball
I think this is a good thing because unless they can change their shot power like 33 or 118 can, then range past 30 ft or so is a trade off for accuracy in the high goal. It should also make the game feel more natural because teams wont be forced to go to specific zones before passing off the ball.
Overall I love the rule changes.
Is this just for elimination matches or for qualification matches too?
I believe it is every match.
Quality rule changes here. Excited for the stream. This opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for strategy. Bold prediction time: First no penalty 400+ score. In Quals.
I’ll throw in that Elims will have a 450+ no penalty score, and a 500+ score due to some form of G28 or G22 or both.
I’m sure with 8 weeks of hindsight, the FRC GDC has some pretty good ideas too.
Yes. Lets not pick on the GDC, they have the hardest job:
Trying to predict what thousands of minds are going to think and do their games and manuals.
-Nick
The rule changes are intended to keep the flow of the game going, reduce referee workload, and allow for some slightly different strategies. We don’t believe the changes give any one style / capability a significant advantage or disadvantage.
Yes, the reference to Possession means Assists.
Yes, 4 game pieces available in autonomous for the entire competition.
We chose to keep the pedestal in the loop because changing that created more potential issues, like “when is a ball scored”, “What if it goes in and rolls back out, but the team has put another ball in play”, … The potential for more issues outweighted the benefit of changing this one.
I think you can tell from the minimal changes that we like the game pretty much as is. As someone stated above, we have the advantage of seeing hundreds of matches and being able to use that knowledge to make just some minor adjustments.
Chris, will the deflection strategy (employed by 4334 in that match) be interpreted as a possession at IRI?
Possession Strategy.
This was the first thing I thought of when I read the new rules. Just awesome
Two other changes I would have added since I am of the opinion that the truss catch was a severely undervalued skill (considering robot design and driver ability):
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Double or triple the catch points. It would make it more in line with the difficulty of the skill, but also would make teams think twice about forgoing the truss play with the “lack of zone” play introduced.
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make a truss shot & catch by yourself worth the same or slightly more than #1 above.
Just a thought,
Matt
The reason we did not change this value is that teams made design decisions on catching based on the point values. If the point value for a catch was always 30 points, then we believe more teams would have designed catchers.
We don’t want to make rule changes with that kind of impact.
Gotcha!
I do think the original gamemakers missed something special by undervaluing that skill.
Debatable. It was hard enough to assist with teams already. If the point value were higher, I’d bet more teams would spend their resources on catching at the expense of improving their intake/outtake ability.
Ideally more teams built robots like 1712 (quick drivetrain, big catching area, good intake/outtake, no shooter), but most teams bite off more than they can chew.
I really wanted to draft these guys all year. We could never really justify it as a first-round pick from where we were seeded, though.
Love the rule changes, and very glad that catching optimization moves down on our off-season priority list.
So dialing in our two ball will be worth it after all!