Below are the planned rule changes for the 2017 IRI.
As always, our intent is to make small adjustments based on what we have learned during 2 months of game play and not do anything that significantly impacts design decisions teams made based on the official game.
For 2017:
**Remove 1 pre-populated gear from the airship. ** Why: Increase the 4 rotor challenge.
**+5 pounds weight allowance. **
*Why: Allows for repairs and minor modifications without major work to maintain 120. *
Draft Order 1-8, 1-8, 8-1.
4 team Elimination Alliances, No Back-Ups.
Any 3 robots can play any match.
Alliance determines driver station placement. Why: Just because.
**G13. Robot Contact in the Retrieval Zone. **
This will be modified to allow contact in certain situations. We don’t know the exact wording.
*Why: Maintain the penalty for blocking or interfering with gear retrieval, but remove the incentive to push a robot into the zone to draw the penalty. *
I figured that there might be more changes on the number of gears and gear placement. I expected the free gear being removed.
What also would’ve been interesting would be if you took the prepopulated gear from the third rotor and moved it onto the fourth rotor. This then greater separates the good gear bots from the less adequate gear bots without changing the overarching challenge of the fourth rotor.
Even though this will not have as great of an effect on match outcomes at IRI as it would championships, it could still cause a swing that could be the deciding factor in certain matches.
I was really hoping to see some adjustment to the climbing aspect of the game; either putting a maximum of 2 climbs per alliance or reducing the points per climb.
Hopefully the talent at IRI will reduce the number of times luck of schedule can kill an alliance by missing a single climb in qualifications. This was probably my #1 gripe with the game this year.
In addition, spring variation should be reduced by methods well known to experienced field staff. There’s no reason match outcomes should be determined by dodgy field maintenance at the IRI.
Re: G13 – I think the IRI committee will find it difficult to draw a sharp line between preventing interference with gear retrieval and preventing forced technical fouls. I think robots on the alliance that owns the retrieval zone should always have the right of way when moving toward it; consequently, calling C08 instead of G13 requires an alert referee following a sequence of actions that lead up to a wrong-color robot being touched while in the zone, and then inferring intent. Intent is much easier to ascribe when the robot is right in front of its driver.
That, I think, is why C08 was so infrequently called. I’ve called it once or twice, usually when there was no excuse for the contact.
Proposal: Start with doing the same thing done to the Secret Passage rule last year (both robots must be in the zone for the foul to be issued). THEN work with what’s left to finish the job.
Applying the Secret Passage rule change from last year would take out most of the “out of boundaries contact”, but not all of it (remember, Retrieval Zone is an angle, Secret Passage was straight). Basically, the “My robot didn’t move in auto” type of stuff, and some of the shove-ins.
But it won’t fix all of the problem. There’s still that couple of inches of extra room, particularly with the tall bots. At least once when a C08 was called, it would have met the proposed revision (and the other 6 calls on that play–of G13–certainly did).
I think the best method for making the rest of the change work would actually be a note that if neither robot was in the zone when contact was initiated, reduced foul, combined with a referee instruction to watch ensuing contact for C08 very carefully.
So…
(Need 5 push-ins to get the same result… and by then the refs should be watching for C08, eh?)
Were you in hibernation?