Blockading Rule Reform

FIRST General Forum
#21

Having blockade as a yellow card offense makes referees call it less often. I think we’d be better off if it was a foul instead. It could escalate to a yellow or red card at the referees’ discretion. This would make it easier for human referees to call a blockade that they feel 85% sure about. It doesn’t automatically swing the match that way.

Having the penalty called once in a while is better at deterring teams from doing defense that makes matches boring and unfun.

I don’t mind the rule as written in 2018. It describes the idea of what they are trying to prevent. Giving referees more options on calling it might help, and I like nuclearnerd’s idea of a visible count similar to what we have with pinning. That allows teams to get feedback without an actual penalty or card if they back off soon enough.

#22

I was wondering about the plausibility of counterplay in this blockade scenario, so I did a little bit of math, which is hopefully reasonably accurate.

The gap between the switch and the wall is, from what I can find, about 217 cm.
Assuming both robots in this interaction are at maximum dimensions, you have two 33 inch by 28 inch robots. With bumpers, this goes to about 40 inches by 35 inches. Converted to metric, you get 101.6 cm by 88.9 cm
If one robot is sits lengthwise in this area, they leave a gap of about 58 cm on either side, a number which is noticeably less than 88.9 cm, the shortest dimension of a normally sized robot.
Given a reasonably skilled driver, with a defensive robot using wheels with quite a bit of traction, I don’t think that pushing through them is a particularly good idea.
So if you can’t go around them, and you can’t go through them, where do you go?
In a normal pinning scenario, there is a specified amount of time that you can spend in contact before having to disengage, which provides the pinned team an opportunity to escape. Getting pinned for ~5 seconds is the risk a team knowingly accepts when traveling into an area where they could be trapped. I think that this degree of choice is what gives defensive strategy its legitimacy- a driver has voluntarily put the robot into a position where an opponent can take advantage of that choice, whether or not it was a mistake. A good defensive strategy is one that enforces the risk your opponent accepted in order to obtain their reward. This, I think, is where blockading strays away from legitimate strategy- the design of this year’s game necessitated that teams use the portal at nearly any level of play. Using the portal was not a choice, it was a basic element of the game’s design that could not be avoided. While not all teams need to travel to the other side of the field in any given match, someone has to. So given this particular aspect of the game’s design, the geometry I mentioned earlier, and the fact that blocking an area without contacting a robot is not considered pinning, you force at least one team to put themselves into a position where there is no real limit to the risk they face, and no real reward, as they had no choice in the first place. This kind of situation is what blurs the line between good defensive strategy and abusing flawed rules and game design.

I hope that we can all agree that, regardless of how we think refs should handle it, blockading is poorly defined and poorly handled in the manual, and needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

#23

I’d prefer the game just be designed to not have an overpowered defensive chokehold and be done with this entirely.

Since that’s probably not going to happen, I’d prefer if they enumerated every possible thing that could cause blockading. Don’t just say “eg.” and hope we “get” it - this is one of the least clear rules year after year.

#24

I really like this idea. Also offers a time limit to any “blockading”, be it intentional or accidental.

-Mike

#25

Here are some examples of counterplay on Einstein in Detroit.

#26

The argument isnt about “effective defense”, it’s that in this years game it is possible to blockade the field in such a way that it is IMPOSSIBLE, regardless software driver skill, to play the game. Theres no outplaying it and to call my point about sitting sideways ignorant, is in itself ignorant. It’s not “positional defense”. You literally place a robot in between the switch and the wall on each side, sideways. They cannot be pushed through, they dont have to move. Its is IMPOSSIBLE given the constraints of the kit. That situation should not be allowed whether it has to be in game design or through reffing.

Arguments based on “play better” show an ignorance to the actual problem of what blockading is. Blockading has only been a real problem the last 2 years and In 2011 because the field allowed for it. Blockading abuses the field to create a situation in which the opposing team cannot play the game.

#27

You’re going to need to explain to me where blockading is occurring in either of those clips. Blocking off 1 of the 2 paths around the switch is not blockading. No one has argued it is. That looks like good positional defense. The red robot could go around the switch to the other side. Only when 2 blue robots are blocking both lanes is it blockading.

#28

Obviously it’s not blockading. It’s getting through a single defender in between the switch and the field wall, similarly to a move that you would need to pull off if you were being blockaded actively on both sides of the switch, thus, obviously not impossible to get through a blockade as some may argue.

#29

I would argue that the defending robot made a mistake by moving. They could not be pushed. If they had just sat in the middle of the lane it would have been impossible for the offensive robot to get through. You cannot “out skill” an immovable object giving you no possible room to get through.

#30

You are right, they did make a mistake.

You do however have to move to block effectively unless your robot can’t turn. Hitting a corner of a robot that you can not push still will rotate them out of the way and they no longer have the benefit of their wheel friction helping them as much. Another example of 217 eventually outplaying the choke point on the field (2013)

If there was no skill involved in playing this defense, more people would have played it, as you can see, it was pretty effective at some of the highest level of play. It’s also pretty important to note that drivers make mistakes all the time, there is no flawless match where nothing could have been improved. You always can find an error and work with it.

I should clarify that I don’t disagree that it is difficult to get around this defense due to the choke point, and I want to loop back to my original point. I believe that there is skill in playing defense well enough to prevent a team from passing through that choke point. You can find plenty of poor defense in this area that is less than effective. The point that is important is that there is an probable inconsistency with level of driving skills, where if you have a weak enough driver that has low ability as the defended robot, they may be the benefactor of a blockading foul/counting from the ref, while a more skilled driver (like 3310) may be able to avoid them (as shown with the positioning errors on the two clips I linked) and thus it makes it harder to call blockading consistently, which is a problem worth addressing in my opinion.

#31

It is possible to construct a blue robot such that it cannot be turned in that situation. In fact it’s quite easy to do, look up 1817.

It is not hard to call blockading this year. If the defending alliance has a robot in between the switch and an opposing robot is trying to get through and is impeded, then its blockading. Regardless of driver skill. It is an attempt to stop a required flow of the game. Its cut and dry.

#32

There is a reason these lanes are not protected zones.

#33

Okay. Lets suppose you are correct, show me a match where a team played defense against a competent driver where the defender was positioned in between the switch wall and the alliance wall, and the defender completely destroys the offense.

Since as you say there isn’t much to pulling off successful defense, it should be relatively easy to find a good match showcasing this.

I’ve shown you plenty of evidence showing that you can get through that defense, can you show me one where the defender prevented the robot from scoring for a very long period of the match? 30s+?

#34

What is defense if not “an attempt to stop a required flow of a game”?

#35

As I originally read it, and continue to read it, the rule as written this year and most recent years was written to explicitly allow robot-on-robot defense, but to prohibit “zone” defense of all instances of a type of goal or game piece source of which there are at least two. (Additionally the 2018 rule prohibited multiple robots colluding in shutting down the exchange.) It’s the clear-to-defense but sometimes subtle-to-referes difference between assigning each robot a role to defend against another robot (and perhaps double teaming), vice assigning a robot to defend each portal, or two robots to defend the exchange. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine how one would shut down all access to cubes (except late in a match) or quarantine an alliance’s robots to a useless zone without pinning, but either would certainly require “zone defense”.

In any case, the key point is - are each of the defending robots defending against a specific robot doing anything at all (perfectly allowed), or are multiple robots working against any of the robots of the other alliance acquiring game pieces from a given type of source, or scoring them in a specific type of “goal” (not allowed)?

#36

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but here’s one. Blue robot traps red inside the zone for over 20s. Red gave up and went around or it could have gone on all day.

#37

No it isn’t. If there’s only one robot doing this impeding it can never be blockading, not in that part of the field anyway. Making them go the long way around isn’t stopping them from scoring, it’s just slowing them down.

#38

As you note this is just good defense, red had total access to the opposing switch (which they eventually went to) and portals, and they could have gone around the switch. We did the same thing in 2017 with airships and you wouldn’t believe how many teams spent 30 seconds ramming into us instead of going the long way around. FIRST needs to have smaller field elements if this type of D is bad for the game. I personally think it fits the NFL lineman analogy well, if my robot is good enough to block yours I can keep you from doing something all day (also similar in the NFL, good DBs can jam WRs at the line with no penalty if within 5 yards of the LOS, and on some plays can literally shut them down the whole play as a result). And it takes a fairly high skill level to execute this correctly, there were a lot of teams who tried the same thing and could not strafe and position their robot effectively so teams slipped by after a few seconds.

I am all for multi-robot blockading penalties, but expanding it to single robots handicaps all defense imo.

#39

One more aspect to throw into this thread.

I think there should be some clearly defined differences between 2-on-1 pinning and blockading. If 2 robots push an opposing robot into the corner of the field, that should be considered pinning. Might be difficult to communicate or call for 2 simultaneous pinning fouls, but I still think that distinction needs to be made. 2 robots working together to pin down 1 opposing robot is a fair sight different from an alliance working together to shut down a major part of the game.

#40

The first question to ask when trying to rewrite a rule is: What is this particular rule trying to protect against? The second question is: Is there another method of doing so? The third question is: Does the current punishment fit the crime?

Once those three are answered, you will know both how to start rewriting the rule and why the rule is written the way it is.

Personally, given those three questions… I would say that given the rule existed on a field with no obstructions at all, the second answer is “no”, and give what my answers to the first question are, I think the punishment actually doesn’t fit the crime. Denying the ability to score points (moving the goal, if you will) is penalized by a “if you screw up something else you lose that match instead”. Personally, I’d add a Tech Foul to the Alliance Yellow Card (and I would keep the Alliance Card, because if you have a 10-1-1 and the 10 eggs the 1’s on, I want to prevent the 10 from trying that stunt again–they’re getting Red the next time, y’see). Not entirely sure I’d put a time limit but that might be a good idea–if so, call it 5 seconds and give yet another thing for the ol’ tomahawk chop count to possibly mean.