So I find G21 scary. I might even call 2016 the year that kit bots were bullied. I originally didn’t think twice about shoving a robot out of my courtyard or the neutral zone into my secret passage (in fact shoving a robot out of your courtyard into a defense ends up running into G43) but with this first update the GDC is making it clear what happens when you get caught in your opponents secret passage. The changes to G21 doesn’t make pushing a robot into the secret passage a “simple” defensive option, you now are gaining 5 points in score and 1 hit point for the tower. If your robot can’t hold its ground in a shoving contest, you are going to find yourself making a match snowball out of control. Anyone have thoughts on this?
The Q&A frowns upon hypothetical situations, but I have a hypothetical situation which I imagine will happen a lot during competition.
Robot A is pushing Robot B
Robot B is capable of moving in one direction (therefore it does not qualify as a pin)
HOWEVER
If Robot B does move in said direction it violates any of the following rules
G21 The only direction Robot B could move is into an opposing robot in their secret passage
G27 Robot B is carrying a boulder and it could escape the pin by moving into the secret passage
And of course god forbid G45
IIRC, there was a lot of this in 2012/2013. Teams trying to long shot the Frisbee would often have another robot trying to push the defensive bot into the “safe zone”. Same with the key in 2012. It seems like there will be a lot of that this year, but it’s not new.
…what? The blue box added to G11 makes what happens here quite clear:
B. A Red ROBOT is parked in the NEUTRAL ZONE near the Blue
SECRET PASSAGE. A Blue ROBOT pushes the Red ROBOT into
the Blue SECRET PASSAGE, then drives away. There is no violation
of G21 by the Red ROBOT, as the Red ROBOT was forced by the
Blue ROBOT into the SECRET PASSAGE. The Blue ROBOT has
violated G11 by forcing the Red ROBOT into the SECRET PASSAGE
for the sole purpose of causing them to violate G21.
While this is from the neutral zone, the concept is the same. G11 on the pushing robot.
As for the rest:
Outlined above. This is a G11 on Robot A.
This only applies in the neutral zone.
I don’t see how holding a bolder changes the result of the G11 blue box.
…I don’t see how being forced OVER the low bar could even happen. If you’re taller than the low bar, standard pinning rules apply.
Alright. Re-reading your initial post, I think I understand where you’re coming from a bit better, but just to clarify: who is punishing whom for bad positioning?
Edit: I initially read your post with the assumption that Robot A can not only freely push Robot B into A’s secret passage, but B will get a tech foul in the end. Is this what you meant? Because this is not the case, per the G11 clarifications.
2005: Go anywhere NEAR the loading zones, risk losing 30 points. More than one team lost a match that way.
2008: Spin too close to a line, lose points.
2012: See “Lane”.
2011: Same thing…
It is the fault of those who are unaware. It is not new at all to you because you have been through it. However to new teams, to rookie teams this is an entirely new experience. I really just hope this game isn’t so punishing it turns teams away from FRC.
If the GDC wanted to they could have made the secret passage a safe zone, instead they gave it complex mechanics. The secret passage is dangerous but it isn’t without its rewards.
Yes. This is the idea. Stealing a boulder from your opponent’s secret passage is a high risk/high reward strategy. Not being familiar with this may hurt rookies (or any team founded since 2014, really), as you stated earlier. However, not being familiar with the intricacies of the rules can always hurt any team, and always will.
I still don’t think this is as complex as you’re making it out to be, though. Essentially:
-Only enter your opponent’s secret passage from the courtyard.
-If you go in your opponent’s secret passage, don’t get touched.
-Don’t push your opponent into your own secret passage for no reason.
…and that’s it, really. I suppose this is comparatively more complex than just “don’t go in”, but every team is supposed to thoroughly read the manual. For whatever reason, the GDC decided you should be able to take boulders from your opponent’s secret passage (though if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it’s so an alliance with a big enough lead can’t just hoard all the boulders in their secret passage and sit there for the rest of the match).
I think as long as they read the rules this shouldn’t be new. Even learning of it at the event should not be very damaging to a rookie team.
There are always ways to get fouls and team updates change the rules. I don’t see how this is different from any other ball game.
Someone absolutely correct me if I am wrong, but I am not finding another game where game mechanics were changed during a match due to technical fouls.
I look at the secret passage like this:
It’s the human player feeder station. It’s perfectly reasonable to make the feeder station a “protected area.” The difference in this game is that game pieces being sent through are more attainable by the opposition than before.
Consider:
The human player is required to send boulders out at a certain point - whether that alliance’s robot is ready or not.
All boulders sent through the station will spent some time on the ground - and likely not in the possession of the intended bot.
In other words, we have a feeder station that is inviting the opposition to swipe the game pieces… They just have to be really, really careful.
I can see a real value in a new type of defense at high levels: An offensive bot that specializes in quickly grabbing boulders in the opponents’ secret passage… And I can see human players rolling a tantalizing boulder out just a wee before their robot arrives, tempting said bot to make an error in judgment… There could be some interesting play around this…
There wasn’t. 50 points sure changed the outcome, though. And before tech fouls was the dreaded “disable-DQ” one-two punch, which DID change the mechanics of the match as a 3v3 became a 2v3.
Here’s a penalty recap of some of the real game-killers:
2005’s “Kiss of Death”: in a low-scoring game, 30 points could wipe an average alliance’s score off the board. Elite alliances could take that and survive, barely.
2008’s line crossing “reverse-direction” penalties weren’t remarkable for their size, but for their frequency.
2014’s 50-point tech foul swayed more than one match.
By the way, other than the slight change to game mechanics (+1 strength to the tower, meaning one more boulder to score before a tower can be captured for +1 ranking point or +25 points), this rule works very similar to 2012’s lane violations.
Because I am a programmer and think very literally, I can think of lots of years where game mechanics were changed during a match due to fouls. Points are a game mechanic, after all.
In all seriousness, tech fouls this year actually seem modest vis-a-vis regular fouls, compared to previous years. I remember in the past tech fouls being horrific disasters, whereas this year they’re only mildly worse than regular fouls.
It is an interesting mechanic, the GDC basically is saying we want it to be more then a tech foul but less then a card which is to say it is encouraged but encouraged in a cautious way. I dunno how to describe it well, it is definitely intentional, and on paper what it looks like is stealing a base in baseball where it should be done carefully and in a calculated manner. I dunno this game is weird.