Ethics of Telling a Team "No"

Competition Rules/Strategy
1

At GTRE this past weekend, there were many teams (I’d imagine many others at other regionals encountered this problem as well) that essentially caused their teammates to lose due to something like a foul or getting in the way of a more competitive robot. In two of 781’s matches, for example, we were very close to a win which would have allowed us to be seeded 3rd and, by extension, 2nd alliance captain, which I think would warrant a much higher chance of winning than being seeded 10th. In the first, I was nervous that a team with a history of fouls in their previous matches was going to incur several, so we asked them if they were absolutely positive that their robot would not pass the maximum height. They were so sure of this, but when it came time for the game, they incurred 70 foul points for our team (one of the fouls was due to their height) and gave us our first loss. The second had a a team claiming that their shooter was working and that their auto would be fine, but when the autonomous period began, they winded up knocking into our robot and veering our successful hot auto off-course. The ball miraculously still went into the other goal, but it was not hot and lost us 5 points that we would have gotten otherwise. We lost the match by 1 point.

I’m not saying that we should’ve been super high on the seeding list because we were better than anyone else. The other two matches were fairly lost, and our drive train was being incredibly funky before a prolonged delay in the matches allowed us to fix it before our match with 1114—as a note for that match, we actually nearly lost that one. We scored around 200 points between us two with auto and assists/truss/etc, but our third partner incurred 100 foul points and gave the other alliance something like 170 points.

I initially wasn’t very angry because our 7th seeded alliance played a strong game and lost to a very strategic and skilled 2nd alliance backed by 1241’s powerful defense, and since I knew we’d lose to 1114 and 3683’s power alliance if it came to that. However, when it turns out that they had actually lost due to something that is currently being discussed in seemingly every thread on these forums, I wondered how well 781 would have done had we been the 2nd-seeded alliance (with a record of 8-2-0 instead of 6-4-0).

Now, I’m not saying that I’m incredibly angry at any team or mentioning specifics, but this is more just me wondering what other people think as a point of discussion. Should teams with experience and strong strategic influence tell teams on their alliance to simply not move at all or stick to a corner where they won’t get in the way?

Personally, I’m not sure what I think. On the one hand, teams that make this happen are restricting some fun driving after the weaker teams built a robot that they toiled many hours over, but on the other hand, the stronger teams worked hard to be competitive and weren’t looking to lose all of that just so that the weaker teams can enjoy themselves.

2

There are very, very few situations when this is strategically logical for any alliance. Most of the time teams have at least one redeeming feature-- whether it’s that they can inbound easily or truss or play light defense.

Maybe in extenuating circumstances-- if a robot is likely to violate the rules just inherently by moving, then it might be better, but with some before match strategizing most robots can be doing something useful during a match.

3

In eliminations the alliance captain sets the strategy.

In seeding games, strategy is negotiated. You really cannot tell another team “no”. They all have paid their entrance fee and get to play their robot as they think best. Smart teams will agree to a strategy that will best use their robots strengths. About the only thing you can do with a hard headed team is try to persuade them and cross them off your pick list.

4

^This.

As painful as it is, this is the nature of the game and each team needs to play it as such. This past weekend at UNH we played qualification matches with our alliance partners utilizing what each person brought or wanted to bring to the alliance. There were many instances where we gave auto balls to partners where our scouting data said we shouldn’t or gave a position to a team who hadn’t played it before. While we ended with more loses than I thought we would our team finished quals as a team player and not a solo alliance member.

If you want to go into matches and play it on your own or chang up the strategy part way through a match go ahead. That is your choice and the rest of us will judge you and your team based on your actions. Yes you might be seeded higher but I doubt many of your qual partners would want to play with you again.

5

No.

This happened to us over the weekend. We were essentially told to disable our auto and sit in the goalie zone for the whole match. We still won, but I can now say that there is no feeling worse than receiving a win that you didn’t contribute to, or, even worse, contributed to through inactivity. (I hold no grudges against the teams involved, both of which are very successful teams who easily deserve the success that have, but I do believe that we could have contributed a lot more to that alliance if they had taken the time to listen to our input.)

6

There seems to be an assumption here that a team is being stubborn or misrepresenting. There’s two other possibilities here:

  1. The team believes they fixed the problem. Last year, we had a number of unfortunate things happen to our robot in New York City. We did fix them and were fine later. (We went on to be the alliance captains that won NYC.) Our team is from NYC and been around long enough to have a reputation so people are apt to believe us if we say we fixed the problem. But what happens if a rookie team has the ball get stuck in their robot during the first two games and says it is fixed. Do you believe them or try to insist they don’t load for autonomous? GP says it should be the former.
  2. FRC isn’t ONLY about winning. How is a team supposed to improve if they are told to sit in the corner? Granted a team shouldn’t want to cause penalties for their partners. But if you can do something 10% faster than they can, maybe it is worth giving them a chance. That’s something I like about this year’s game. It encourages all three teams to be involved in some fashion.
7

A team said that we should just not have a ball at the start of auto to allow for quick cycles, believing that our drive train was still in disrepair from the prior matches where it veered to the left and failed in autonomous. Through insistent nudges, eventually we were able to convince this team to agree and we got it on the field, detected hot correctly and winded up scoring a 70-point auto. From then on, we didn’t miss a single hot auto in qualifications and got the 2nd highest auto score besides the first few matches (1st was 1114; who would have thought? :p)

This is what makes this topic so interesting; teams want to win, but they can also miss out on a great opportunity if a team claims that they have something working. Sometimes this isn’t true, as was the case with other teams on our alliances, but telling a team “no” can leave you out of a truthful statement and ultimately leave you out of a win.

8

On another, more pragmatic note, experienced and strong teams have every right to tell teams not to do something-- just as those teams have every right to ignore them. As Frank said, strategy in qualification rounds is negotiated-- for the majority of teams, if you come in and tell your alliance partners how to play a match, it will cause problems. Talk it out, and come to as close to a consensus as you can. Chances are all three teams want to win.

9

They could tell them, but I don’t see why they would have incentive to listen, and it seems like that would be a poor strategic choice anyway. Every team with a semi-working drive train should be able to at least pin a ball for a possession, and if they can’t manage that you probably have nothing to worry about because they won’t be moving at all during the match due to those issues.

This really isn’t any different than discussion between working robots about who will be scoring, except it now revolves around different game actions. How do you normally handle those discussions? They happen in just about every match. Alliances that don’t agree on a strategy usually perform poorly relative to their max potential, regardless of if it is 3 boxes on wheels that get penalties every time they move or the world championship alliance on Einstein.

10

Unfortunately, this is year is unusual in that the actions of a single team can completely undermine the efforts of its alliance members. While I strongly believe that teams who come to play should be given the opportunity to show what they’ve done, there is a limit. If a team continually demonstrates that its actions seriously detract (through missed auto shots or frequent fouls), other more ambitious teams should be able to strongly request that that the team not load balls or move their human player to a different role. In the elimination rounds, a team better consider whether they’re going to be “benched” when they accept a position on an alliance. They are not entitled to play how they want at that point–it’s a privilege, not a right, to make the playoffs.

Having fun does not mean doing so at the expense of another team. Remember that if a team causes a loss, their alliance members will have less opportunity to advance to the elimination rounds and to have yet more fun.

I expect that the number of times that a team will be requested to “sit out” a significant role in a match will be quite minimal–2 or 3 times maximum out of 10 to 12 matches in qualifying. That means that the team will be able run as they like at 7 times and probably many more through the match.

11

The reason why I see a lot of teams taking chances on Auton’ is that it paints the robot in a better light. It says “we have the capability!” for those teams who recognize that odds are against them for them getting to be one of the people who picks alliances the next best thing they can do is make them self look attractive so they will be picked. Besides nobody wants to see something they put hard work into not be utilized so there is always a little bit of ego.

12

You can and should tell a team no (to loading auto balls, to shoot at the high goal, etc) if you think it will help you win the match. However, if they think they have a better plan to win the match than you, they don’t have to follow your advice.

There’s a role on an alliance for any team that can drive. Even if they don’t have an amazing shooter, they can still contribute to a win by getting assist points, playing D, etc. If a team is telling you that you’re so bad you should stay in the corner, you have a definite right to tell them to sick it. If you believe your robot should take a more dominant role in a match, work with the other teams so you get assist points.

When I had trouble convincing teams to play D in the offseason, I often reminded them that given their current scouting report, they weren’t going to be picked because of their shooting performance (which was often mediocre at best). They were going to get picked because they could play great D, something we were offering to help them do.

13

The discussion was more for the teams that are prone to fouls; if they incur several foul in the match regardless of how well they performed, than you can end the match instantly. In my example, it was when a robot was too tall and the team claimed that they weren’t–during the match, we lost because they got 70 foul points.

But I do agree with what you said.

14

I find this a very interesting question as well as something I have been on both sides of.

This year we started off as a very sporadic robot. And I do mean sporadic. Mecanum drivebase +Uneven weight distribution = robot that doesn’t go in the direction that it is supposed to. (The physics is actually really interesting) We figured it out, and now our robot is fine. However, before it was fixed our robot ran head on into another robot during autonomous, loosing us a auto-hot-high-goal. It was an honest mistake for our robot, one that never happened again. Yet, it did happen, and I’m sure some scouters noticed it.

The thing that makes this years game interesting (and frightening) is that the actions necessary to win the match are not necessarily the ones that attract the attention for scouters. Every robot wants to prove their shooter and their ability to pass.

Some drive teams just won’t be a team player, and there isn’t much you can do about other than crossing them off of your pick list.

Yet, I agree with the sentiment of some of the other responses. All of these teams, regardless of their results, have worked hard on their robot. Having anyone tell them to go sit in a corner is quite honestly offensive.

The best strategy of creating a strategy from what I can see, is to make the distinction from struggling robots and stubborn drive teams. Ask the teams who have struggling robots to play defense. I saw several teams shut down because of good defense. As for the stubborn drive teams, make sure that you aren’t being one of them, cross them off of your pick list, and remember not to get too frustrated with them, there isn’t much you can do. Good Scouters will notice these teams. At least at CIR, they were announcing the teams that had incurred penalties.

15

I have yet to meet the team who doesn’t want to win a match.

I have yet to meet the team that WANTS to get a foul.

I have met many teams that in a bungled attempt to play the game well, either incur a foul or mess up a scoring play. Met them? Heck, I’ve mentored one.

Ask me about our team history and I’ll tell you that in one of our first matches… at the Canadian Regional, incidentally, the forerunner of GTRE… “we were so bad that we made team 33 lose.” Yep, two team alliances, and a powerhouse partner who could have won on their own, and we incurred enough fouls and messed up enough game play to lose the match.

We apologized, went back to the pits and analyzed what we’d done. We developed strategies to avoid doing that in future matches. Drivers, coaches and human players would be subject to a rules test before we got to the tournament, and robot designs were developed specifically with an intent to stay within the rules.

I won’t pretend that we never had another foul called on us, or never messed up a play again… but I’ll suggest that few teams would have had a cleaner record.

Would that have happened if we had just sat in the corner and let 33 win? I still feel a bit guilty that our learning experience came at their expense, but it drove home the need to be prepared in a very visceral fashion that became embedded in our team culture.

Play clean, play hard, and play with the cards you are dealt. Maybe next tournament you’ll “steal” a match or two back as other veteran teams help a few more rookies to have a defining moment like that.

Jason

16

No. Scouts don’t just look for robots that can shoot. If they do, they’re bad scouts.

Unless you’re one of the best shooters at the regional, shooting will likely not get you picked. Being a meh shooter is actually worse than not shooting this game, as you’ll lose your alliance much more time chasing down the ball than you’ll gain in points if you happen to make it in the high goal. Smart scouts know this, and won’t really care I’d you made 8 high goal shots or 3 if your drivetrain isn’t there or you don’t appear to pass well.

Passing, on the other hand is something that every team can and should demonstrate to scouts, and something that will contribute to almost any qualification alliance. Probably one of the easiest and best things for a robot to do in quals (given even a KitBot drivetrain and extremely basic ball handling skills) is to sit in front of the human player, receive the ball and pass it to another robot, and then go play defense. This isexactly what scouts are looking for, will make a positive contribution to your alliance, and stay “out of the way” of other robots.

17

I disagree with the “meh” shooter thought; if one has a men shooter, then they can still shoot over the truss and not have to be accurate, while at the same time being a team player that helps out the main shooter of the team.

18

The thread can end here.

This is why Aerial Assist is a terrible game for rookies/less experienced teams.

Teams at the top of their game often need to convince detrimental alliance partners to not use a majority of the features (pick up/catapult/auto mode/etc) they’ve spent 2 months pouring their heart and soul into because they are inconsistent and/or slow down the cycle. Occasionally, coaches get creative and re-purpose a design to provide the needed assists. Often though, this is not possible. This is heartbreaking, but FIRST has put top teams in this spot.

Please don’t do this again FIRST.

-Mike

19

I take the opposite view. It is a great game for rookies/less experienced teams. It is a great opportunity for the teams at the top of their game to use their GP and mentor the less experienced teams. Unlike some previous games you can drive & play defense with little risk of fouls. So coaching a willing team can be effective.

The playing only for a team’s self interest to the detriment of the alliance is not just a rookie issue. You can’t tell those teams no because they will not listen to you anyway.

20

Helping a team maximizing their scoring potential is in everyone’s best interest. Unfortunately some people either live in magical christmas land or they value trying to show off over team performance. Sitting in the corner nundging the ball against the wall to trap it is not a bad strategy for some teams. It all depends on how the other teams approach pre match but everyone should buy into the overall strategy to optimize performance.