Seconded.
Ties in eliminations are decided by another match not tiebreakers.
Perhaps, but it doesnāt really seem like there is that much space on the field to gain momentum, unlike 2014.
You canāt really get rid of both the drawbridge and the sally port, unless you plan to do away with the defense categories altogether and have teams put any defense in any slot. Aside from that, I for one, happen to like the portcullis. :rolleyes:
This. So much this.
Iād take this a bit further and replace the extra RPs for breaches and captures with their elimination point bonuses. I donāt see a reason we should be playing a slightly different game between qualifications and elims.
In addition, remove the batter requirement for captures. Iām assuming tower strength will be raised for IRI and putting that many balls in the tower is an impressive effort in itself. Removing this requirement will remove the chances of a weaker 3rd robot losing the alliance 25pts by not being able to make it back to the batter on time, and opens up more strategic flexibility within the last 30s of the match.
I agree with this one, at least in part. Focusing on the capture, for a team trying to rank very high, losing the one RP due to a single alliance memberās mistake can be very defeating. I think teams should at least be allowed to make up for their alliance memberās mistakes by outscoring their opponents above the 25pt bonus (and not spending a bunch of time pushing their own partner around, despite how awesome it was to watch).
For the breach, the importance is less, as one robot could theoretically achieve a breach alone, but if we are changing the capture, we might as well change the breach over to elims style too. The FMS might even let us do that already, though I am not sure where the play-style change made by the Scorekeeper, and if it necessitates actually running an elims bracket.
When I breach, your secret passage is no longer protected. I can get returning boulders with impunity, and cross back to the neutral zone without negotiating a defense.
This has the following advantages:
- it encourages faster breaching.
- it encourages higher scores
- it gets rid of some penalties
- it fits the theme
This can be combined with many of the other permutations mentioned (forcing three crossings, crossing all five for a breach, doing away with ranking points, etc).
You might also remove the one defender limit when the walls fall, if you want to force teams to be more strategic about it.
Look at it like this - whatever you do by forcing additional crossings is still going to be easy for IRI teams to do in two minutes. Anything thatās reasonable enough to be implemented will still happen every match, it will just take longer and weāll end up with less scoring. This wil make fast breaching more important while still keeping the focus for the audience on robots shooting balls.
Thereās enough space to gain excessive force. A bump is enough to disrupt any shot. What I saw out there was excessive. Look at the match videos from carson field. I donāt want any to ever have to experience play like that again.
I think a large amount of the issues I saw on that field were from uninforced rules, but adding another layer of protection is some positive step as opposed merely blaming refs.
Also the definition of intent may be vauge, but I think we can all agree that giving up points or drawing fouls should count as intent. Maybe we can make that clearer. You canāt accidentally tip a robot inches from the outer works outer works, they were already gone. You canāt accidentally push a robot into your own secret passage from your courtyard in the last 25 seconds when they should be running away. I saw both of those things happen in our field, and it needs to end NOW.
General guidelines we use are that we wonāt make changes that are a major impact to designs, and we try to limit changes so that teams donāt 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.
Thanks for all of the suggestions and input. We are working to create the modifications (if any).
Any rule modification will be posted for teams before the Invitation Response deadline, so teams can determine if they want to play the modified game before they commit.
I think the batter requirement makes the end game so much more exciting. 330ās second self-righting wouldnāt have been that exciting for the 5 point challenge nor would 1678ās and 1405ās near misses at challenging be as heart-breaking.
Tactical Flashlights must be on a switch for safety purposes. Accidental shining of flashlight near person (spectators included) is a technical foul, quickly escalating E&R with a red card foul.
Would this include LED rings?
I adamantly disagree with this rule change, actually. The batter races are some of the most tense and exciting parts of the game. While it is frustrating to not make it onto the batter, it adds importance to the endgame and creates more opportunities for strategies and risk (last second scoring, hanging with an unreliable mechanism, etc) and I think the game would lose a LOT of its value if this were gone. This change more than most other changes would change the dynamics of the game a lot, and I donāt think itās a positive change.
While bright, the LED rings do not focus the light into a tight beam.
That said, there were some teams with LED rings that would be better called round LED panels. Maybe LED rings with more than 20 (?) LED lights.
What about requiring switches for focused beams that produce more than x lux of light at 6 feet?
These changes would make the game pretty boring to watch. This is one of the few games where a qual alliance thatās totally outgunned actually has something to shoot for (and their fans something to root for), and itās because of breach/capture RPs. I think the reasons for keeping the latter have been well covered.
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.
I have a feeling that this would just inflate the ranking points of top tier teams while creating a larger divide between the top and the bottom percentiles.
I agree with you. You make a great point, but my reasoning was because IRI is supposed to be for REALLY a good teams so the point gap wouldnāt be that great for most matches. The point behind the idea was that it would give teams somethin to work toward before the competition, such as making their cycle time faster and finding a way to score more points.
Might have been suggested already, but ditch the requirement that has one defense from each group on the field.
That alone will likely put the Group Cās and the Portcullis out of play.