Feedback for FIRST on Rules ...

Competition Rules/Strategy
1

I realize that there will be a FIRST Team Forum again this summer when we can express our views on things. But, before our memories become fogged by time, I thought I would start a list of things that FIRST may want to rethink/improve for next year.

I will start things off with my own short list (in no particular order) .

#1 – the light rules (orientation, visibility, exposure, etc) needs to be thought about WAY before folks ask and then NOT CHANGED.

#2 – the details of autonomous need to be thought about WAY before folks ask (when can we touch the controls, what state will various bits be in at various times before, during and after the autonomous period, etc.)

#3 – the rules on accounting for labor in the $3500 should be thought about WAY before kickoff – in actual fact, I like how the rules eventually ended up – I just wish that FIRST had gotten there ahead of us.

#4 – the spring energy rule (M11) that complicated counterbalance options should be revisited in the off season (and changed to encourage counterbalance rather than complicate it).

#5 – the rule against pressing a clevis pin out from the air cylinders should be revisited (as it stands, this rule does not meet the “reasonableness test” in terms of complexity driven into a robot vs. the potential “danger” of a team damaging an unpressurized cylinder while removing the pin)

#6 – the jive.ilearning board needs major improvement.
There are still too many conflicting answers.
It is still to complicated to follow the ebb and flow of the rules.
And, perhaps worst of all, it is almost impossible to keep up to date on the FINAL word on a particular subject (for example, you have to read a message, then look at the date to see if this was before or after a conflicting ruling in an update).
FIRST should really work to make a “living” rulebook with the final wordings of all rules and perhaps even links to examples and/or discussions that allow for further clarification.

#7 – the new open ended materials list was WONDERFUL, but the explanation and associated flowchart to decide if a material was legal was pretty confusing. I think some clarity can be brought to the explanation of this rule.

#8 – the explanation of who wins an Elimination Round is somewhat confusing. Here is how I am going to explain it to my mom: “The alliance that wins the match with the highest total score (winning score + losing score) advances. For example if Alliance A wins 4 to 3 and then loses 2 to 1, they advance because they won the match that had a total score of 7=4+3 is which is a higher total score than the one they lost 3=2+1”
I don’t claim this is a perfect explanation, but it seems better to me than the one FIRST has published. In any case, some clarity in this explanation would be helpful.

#9 – the dithering on stack height, possible negative scores, etc. was a real distraction during a critical time for teams. This really could have been resolved once and for all prior to kickoff. *

That is all that comes to mind right now. I am sure I will think of more.

Perhaps you have more ideas, if so, please share them --try to keep it as constructive as possible. Use it as a chance to help FIRST get better not as a chance kick them in the shins.

Joe J.

*I have a theory about the whole negative scoring thing. I think that perhaps FIRST got nerveous about what I am calling the “Beatty Maneuver”, in which a team lockes up enough points to ensure victory in the first 5 seconds of the match, and tried to “fix” the problem by (for a few days at least) allowing negative scoring. If my guess (and it is just a guess – I have NO inside information on this) is correct, then a better path would have been to lower the score for the top of the ramp (to 10 or 15 perhaps). But what is done is done. Let the games begin…

2

I think that FIRST needs to invest in a message board like this one.

there are many different types of boards, and they are easy to set up: heck, video game “clans” have easy to set up forums, and they have virtually no resources compared to FIRST.

FIRST should also release a copy of the rules, updated with team updates, once per week, or at the very least, at the end of the season.

I also think FIRST should go back to using balls: we didn’t intentionally abuse our bins, and we basically trashed them with use.

I think FIRST made a step in the right direction this year, by making the game more challenging. I really liked the 4 on 0 idea though: I don’t know why people hated that so much.

3

the problem isnt the message board itself, it’s misuse that causes problems. people are posting without looking for an answer on the forum first, or even worse without reading the manual. It’s just stupid

4

Limit it’s use to team leaders, and 2 questions per day, and a penalty if the question is in the manual or already posted. The pentalty could be loss of access for a few days or a week. :smiley:

5

I think that a lot of problems could have been addressed if FIRST themselves did some sorting and cross indexing of the Q&A threads.

It seems like it could have been relatively easy to have the rules sorted and linked to the rule they were addressing.

Now that I think of it, it wouldn’t the THAT easy but it would have been worth the bother.

Also, I think they should have sort of a “frequently discarded question bin” that they could have tossed all the silly and or stupid questions into.

They should not ANSWER them – the should just put them someplace where we can all see what has been asked an discarded. I think it would have helped a lot.

Joe J.

6

Here’s something that MUST be mentioned at the FIRST Forum this summer:

There is a thread mentioning this: The Inspection Sheet should be available at kickoff. There is no reason it shouldn’t be. If they need to update it so be it, they give out the rule book at kickoff, but they change that all season.

----edit-----

Also every year I read the notes from the Forum and all I see year after year is how they want to make the game easy for someone not involved to watch and know what is going on. I think that this years game is great for the teams (maybe a bit hard for some teams), but it is very complex to the lay person and even some team members.

-----edit-----

Oh yeah I forgot that dang light and team numbers and thier visability. There should be no question. Maybe they should use a smaller light. Have you ever seen the motorized cart at the store that is used to gather all the shopping carts? They have a small light with an amber filter on them which would be perfect (obviously with blue and red). FIRST could use these and say 100% of the colored filter must be visible from the top of the bot 360 degrees all the time with the exception of something like a moving arm. If this is said up front then teams have to design there bot to accept this.

7

*Originally posted by Joe Johnson *
**I think that a lot of problems could have been addressed if FIRST themselves did some sorting and cross indexing of the Q&A threads.

Also, I think they should have sort of a “frequently discarded question bin” that they could have tossed all the silly and or stupid questions into.

They should not ANSWER them – the should just put them someplace where we can all see what has been asked an discarded. I think it would have helped a lot.

Joe J. **

I think a “frequented discarded question bin” would be a good idea to propose: it’s so often that people ask pointless and foolish questions, that are, for lack of a better term, stupid.

There should also be a place to put questions that are answered in the manual. FIRST should not have to quote the manual. At all. All these questions asked by lazy people who wouldn’t take the time to look at the manual or team updates.

A few extra staffers would help too: as well as a limit on 1 or 2 posters per team: preferably adults (although they are often no better than children)

–Ben

8

*Originally posted by Joe Johnson *
**I think that a lot of problems could have been addressed if FIRST themselves did some sorting and cross indexing of the Q&A threads.

It seems like it could have been relatively easy to have the rules sorted and linked to the rule they were addressing.

Now that I think of it, it wouldn’t the THAT easy but it would have been worth the bother.
Joe J. **

This is actually somewhat what I did with the Hyperrules system(which I unfortunately haven’t had much of a chance to update these past few team updates, but most of them are there), even going sofar as to include discussion links(powered by this forum) and a link to the Jive forums, asking a question with the rule number already referenced. I know that a few people at FIRST have been taking a look at it, so maybe something like that is in store for next year…hard to say…

9
  1. I second the idea of posting an updated manual each week which reflects the changes imposed by the team updates, perhaps with cross-outs and underlines.

This is how congress updates bills, universities update governance documents, the military updates mil specs, etc.

  1. FIRST should release the “robot” section of the game in the pre-season. They should stabilize on a set of construction rules which vary only a little bit each year. This year’s robot rules were the most sensible that I have seen, especially the flow chart, forbidden hardware, etc.

Since Dean said that the competition was not supposed to be fair, what’s the problem with letting us know in advance what materials and sources we can use?

I think some of the grumpiness this year occurred because such substantial changes were made to all aspects of the game. It’s amazing that they got as much right as they did.

  1. FIRST needs to do more extensive play testing before the season begins. Because they feel the need to have a completely different game each year, they cannot achieve a balance from one year to the next. For instance, if they replayed 2002’s game, they would have allocated different points to the goals, dealt with file cards, been definitive on tether bots, etc. This replayed game would be more balanced.

FIRST should stabilize on game field artifacts. More teams will be able to manipulate bins after this year than do it this year. If FIRST wants to see effective bin manipulation by most teams in the competitions, it needs to let us see them more than once.

Although changing things around makes for a better engineering competition, it makes for a less spectator friendly competition.

  1. FIRST should return to soccer balls or basket balls. We have done numerous demos in the off-season with all of our different bots. The soccer ball shooter -always- gets people fired up. The other robots are just curiosities.

  2. The group who designed this year’s game deserve high praise for pulling off such a lot of changes with as few problems as have arisen. Despite criticisms, this has been a very good build season.

  3. If FIRST wants to distinguish itself from other robotics competitions, it should reconsider the 4v0 strategy.

The scrimages I have seen so far this year, and many of last year’s matches, look like chaos. In 4v0, you could at least tell what the teams were trying to accomplish.

  1. FIRST should do away with score multipliers. You should get your score if you win. You should get your score if you lose.
10

One suggestion I have is to either update the manual as the team updates come out, or release the manual in a more easily editable format. Editing the PDF files this year took way too much time, and many rule updates couldn’t be added, since there is no way to reflow to document to make them fit.

11

I disagree on the opinions that FIRST should stick to one field artifact (bins, balls, towers, etc.)

What they are trying to prevent by changing around the objects is for teams to gradually gain more and more experience handling a certain type of object, and dominating rookie teams. By changing it around, FIRST signifigantly levels the field between rookie and veteran teams

12

*Originally posted by Nate Smith *
**This is actually somewhat what I did with the Hyperrules system(which I unfortunately haven’t had much of a chance to update these past few team updates, but most of them are there), even going sofar as to include discussion links(powered by this forum) and a link to the Jive forums, asking a question with the rule number already referenced. I know that a few people at FIRST have been taking a look at it, so maybe something like that is in store for next year…hard to say… **

I for one greatly appreciated Hyperrules. When I first used it my thought was “they should have done this OFFICIALLY a long time ago”. If FIRST is trying to promote innovation, they need to innovate themselves. Non-searchable pdfs are reasonably secure from unauthorized changes, (which is why I assume they use them) but are an endless frustration when trying to find the rule on a particular subject.

Thanks for the hard work Nate!

13

As one of those involved with the design of the game for this year, I would like offer the following observations:

  • The process of designing the 2003 game started on the last day of the 2002 Championship Competition, and didn’t really finish until the day before the kick-off this year. It involves a very significant number of people, from all across the country, most of them volunteering a tremendous amount of time and effort. Their efforts were supported and augmented by the Engineering staff at FIRST.

  • There is a very considerable effort to make sure that as many loopholes, “gotchas” and “oopps!” elements of the game are identified and eliminated as possible, long before teams ever see the game. That process starts earlier and earlier each year, but always seems to take longer and longer as the games become more intriguing.

  • Despite our best efforts, we missed a few things. WE KNOW we missed a few things! Some of these were items that we never saw coming, some were ones that we knew about but simply ran out of time to resolve.

  • Every year, the game design team puts together a list of lessons learned and things to correct for the following year, and starts to work on them earlier (the process of designing the 2004 game has already started, even before this year’s competition has completed!). Trust me, the list of things that need to be fixed compiled by the game design team is a LOT longer than the one you have listed so far!

  • Throughout the entire process, the game design team WANTS to get feedback from the teams, schools, and sponsors. They need to know how you react to the game, the rules, and the intent, of the challenges they create, and they want to use that information to do a better job the next year. So let them know what you think. But to keep the information flow manageable, please consider the following two points:

    — FIRST provides specific opportunities, such as the Team Forum, as channels for providing feedback. Use them! Ideas and comments gathered during these events are specifically captured and used by the game design team. Random e-mails, phone calls, and notes written on napkins and passed to judges at the competitions can “fall between the cracks” and not get through to the right folks that can use and act on the information.

    — CONSTRUCTIVE criticism is always welcome. Stone-throwing will be ignored.

Having been through the process this year, I have a new appreciation for just how difficult it is to design a good game each year. It is a big job, and an enormous effort is required to pull it off. From the outside, it is almost impossible to understand how much goes in to the process each year (I know that before I went through it, I never ‘got it’). The simple reality is that the direct FIRST staff is too small to do this on their own - they have to rely on the support of volunteers and donated efforts to get the job done. Toward that end, when you make a suggestion that “FIRST needs to do XXXX,” you should realize that the very best way to ensure that “XXXX” will happen is to find a way to get your idea developed and implemented by a corporate sponsor, and provided as a complete solution to FIRST (e.g. the creation of the injection molds, and the plastic molding, for the gear box elements including in this year’s kit were all donated by a certain corporate sponsor). Ideas like having a fully supported HyperRules system are great - but are much more likely to be implemented if a team could convince their corporate sponsor to pick up responsibility for the implementation and support of the HyperRules system, than if we just toss the idea to FIRST and say “go do this.”

-dave

Y = AX^2 + B… ehhh, whatever

14

I want to re-state my desire for this message thread to stay as positive as possible.

This is not a bash FIRST thread.

Let’s keep this as much as possible an opportunity to list the things that we should try to improve for next year while they are still fresh in our memory.

Keep the suggestions coming.

Keep flaming FIRST messages to yourself.

Joe J.

15

*Originally posted by dlavery *
**Ideas like having a fully supported HyperRules system are great - but are much more likely to be implemented if a team could convince their corporate sponsor to pick up responsibility for the implementation and support of the HyperRules system, than if we just toss the idea to FIRST and say “go do this.”
**

I would be more than willing to take this on…

16

Joe, good thread idea. We’d all forget these things by the time the Feedback Session roles around.

Dave, bookmark this thread.

Sorry if this repeats any previous posts.

At SOAP we tend to focus on the game, scoring, and scoring component aspects of the competition:

  1. No Balls. THANKS FIRST FOR THE CHANGE…AGAIN!! Tubes in Torrid Terror and Floppies in Double Trouble were just the breaks we needed after too many seasons of deformed and inconsistant balls. Keep the veterans on their toes!

  2. The EP strategy is nice in that I believe it is trying to reduce the division between the traditional “High Scoring Qualifying Round” robots and the “Elimination Round Winning” robots. The rule is trying to make the score in the Elim rounds matter.

Unfortunatly, I think this may fail to produce the desired result because of the game design. Two wins still guarantee victory. And if it turns out that the Killer KOH robots control the match, were destined for 2002 all over.

A more interesting design rule caveat than the “Cannot touch both sides of the inner wall on the ramp/platform” would have been teams may not have a wingspan greater than, say, 8 feet.

As soon as the former statement was made at the Kickoff teams immediately thought, “okay i’ll make a 11’ 11.5” wingspan and try and control the ramp/hill. 25-50 points is HUGE."

Another more interesting game/design rule caveat may have been: Teams may attach to the HDPE, but not in the first 1:00.

  1. Related to #2. Stack Attack still has too heavy a bias toward one aspect of the game - being KOH. It’s still too similar to Zone Zeal in that controlling three goals in your goal-zone GUARANTEED a victory. One reply by FIRST on the ilearning board was something like “the goal of this year’s game was to build a robot that stacks bins”. I hope the stackers win the National comp and prove 90% of us wrong.

One way to have reduced the expected bias toward teams building KOH robots would be to eliminate the Limbo bar, or raise it much higher, so that robots can go under easier, but
robots carring stack could not.

  1. Match Scoring Tie Breakers- good move. We can live without tiebreakers. Especially in this year’s game, there should be very few ties anyway. The elimination of these also reduces the logic complexity needed in the ScoringFIRST application.

4b) HOWEVER, a tie basically does nothing…in fact it behaves more like a loss for both alliances. That’s beacuse of SC14 #2 which considers only the number of Wins, not the percentage.

At least in the NFL a tie is considered 1/2 Win and 1/2 Loss. That affects the Win %. So a Team that is 0-0-10 (0.500) would rank higher than a Team with 1-9-0 (0.100). If ties are allowed going forward, maybe allow for this kind of formula for winning percentage.

  1. Team Update #12 brought in a horrible rule. In the event of a Tie after 3 matches in a particular elimination round AND Both Alliances have the same High EP, the tie breaker is: Higher Seeded Team advances. This is unexceptable.

Can you imagine the world series, or the super bowl ending in a tie, and one team gets the victory because they were the higher seed? No way. {aside} Interesting how Bud Selig made a mistake in letting the 2002 MLB All-star game end in a tie. No way this happens in any sport again. FIRST shouldn’t either. There must be a champion.

Albeit an extremely hard case to get to, This is no way to decide who advances on, or wins an event. Play a 4th match!! If the concern was the ScoringFIRST application gets too complex to handle dynamic elimination round match-lengths, than what you do is, effectively, replay the third match. Erase the scores from the old #3 and replay.

In soccer, there is a shoot-out. 1 goalie, 1 Kicker. Maybe something can be implemented in the 2004 eliminations to handle ties after X matches. For 2003, maybe it could have been the highest stack created in 30 seconds?

  1. The HP has too little a role this year.

6b) The HP pads are probably an expense that could be reduced next year. Hope they’re slip-proof. I’m weary about a game feature that invites students to run and hop around near the playing field border in the last 2 seconds of HP mode.

  1. Auto mode is nice. Finally the SW Teams have something exciting and very dynamic to work on. 15 seconds is probably too long though. 10 might be better. I think a lot of teams will accomplish their task in 5-6 seconds and sit for the remaining time.

  2. Start now to make sure Championships are back to EPCOT, Orlando in 2004 and beyond.

That’s all for now.

Regards,
KA-108 :cool:

17

I think threads like this are forgetting one slightly important thing…the game/season has NOT EVEN BEEN PLAYED YET.

Blanket statements like:
“this part of the game won’t work, a better solution would have been…”, “the game will be dominated by situation X, and a better scoring rule would have been…”, and “we must get FIRST back to Epcot in 2004” are nothing more than speculation at this point - does anyone agree?

After all, there may be a reason FIRST holds their team forum AFTER the season - and that’s probably so they can get “actual” feedback from teams who have played the game, not how people “guess” the game will be played.

But before the game has even been played and before ANYONE has even witnessed how the Houston Championship may work?
Many of the guesses made on this thread will end up being accurate - we all know that. But many will not - let’s just wait and see how everything plays out and THEN give our thoughts on what was bad and (maybe, just maybe…don’t laugh…) what was good about the game. FIRST listened to team input more than ever this off season, and they intend to do so again - they are very genuine about including teams to improve the program each year.

Not to slam this thread - it is a very valuable and necessary thread for all teams to contribute to…in April.

My 2.5 cents for February,

JM

(Can’t wait till the FIRST week of regionals - good luck to all)

18

Jason,

Good points. But… …My main reason for starting this thread now rather than waiting until after the season was to capture stuff that is fresh in our heads now.

Predictions of how the game will be played are not really that useful right now. The main focus I would like to see is stuff that affected your robot design and build process.

Things like construction rules, material rules, game changes that affected the design and build, etc.

A focus on these types of rules now is worth the bother of this thread because after the season is up and running, these types of things fade into the background.

I feel they are important. Documenting them now is appropriate (imho).

Joe J.

P.S. With the slight exception of point #8 and the side issue of guessing why negative scoring was considered, all of the points in my initial message were of the kind I was suggestion folks submit.

19

Hey Joe,

I understand your point, and do agree that the original intention of this thread is indeed valuable.
And you are 100% right - there are a number of areas which can certainly be improved next year, as there are every year - and getting some of those down now while on our minds, especially with all the chaos of the competition season coming up, is certainly worth doing so we don’t forget (my main item would be your # 6 - contradicting answers in the manual, updates, and message board). On the other hand, having attended a number of Team Forums, I have found that RARELY do teams actually forget problems, issues, and criticisms to gladly share with FIRST at the forums. :slight_smile:

My reply was really directed at the posts which went off on tangents and were mainly speculation on things like how the game will be played and how it should be fixed, the Championship being better in Epcot in Houston, and other things which aren’t worth harping on FIRST about until after the season is over.

Good luck at the Buckeye Regional next week!

(Now I REALLY wish 71 & 111, & some others - would follow the lead of the Delphis - Baker & Technokats and Johnson,Martus, & the Chief and post some pictures of your robots!!!)
:wink:

20

I agree with some comments made earlier. I will paraphrase here and insert some add’l thoughts:

(and keep it positive :wink:

Regarding the Manual -
For those with slow connections, offer the updates in a format that provides replacement pages. Clearly printed at the top of an update page is the print date, “supercedes MM/DD/YY”, and the page number. The updates get read, and then dropped into an updated manual. I like the idea of using strike-throughs and bolding on the changes. If a change go so far as to require add’l pages, it can always be split to “replace page 20 with pages 20a and 20b”

For those with fast connections, always have the latest, fully updated manual available. If I grab that version, then my freshly downloaded and printed manual should resemble a properly updated manual; minus the coffee and krispy kreme stains

Regarding the boards -
I like the idea of a “disregarded questions bin” (that’s a nicer way of saying “stupid question bin”, but we all know there is no such thing, right?)

The previous board format allowed subscriptions. For the most part, that worked well. I would like the opportunity to subscribe to a list that would send me (daily/weekly/?) the latest ANSWERED QUESTIONS. In fact, that mailing could also include the “disregarded questions” in two categories “already answered” and ahem “not well thought out”

An official, registered set of “Askers” from each team would be OK, but don’t limit the number of people that could subscribe to the answers. It is just as easy for someone to shoot the question over to their team’s “Asker” as it is to ask it directly.

Regarding the game:
Keep on surprising us! Last year was great, this year was/is great.

I’ve never participated in a 4 v 0 format, but I think that could be done in a way as to be spectator friendly, too. It would just require that you watch more than one match to see how teams are doing. There is a certain positive social aspect being thrown together with a random alliance and figuring out how to maximize that alliances point total. The finals in that format could then switch to a slightly different game, or could be done with “Alliance One” competeing while “Alliance Two” waits “sequestered” unable to see what happens.

I said this during the last request for ideas and I’ll say it again - adding a skill/requirement with easily discernible societal (sp?) value is a great idea. For example
-put a door on the field with a standard, round handled lockset - points provided for opening and closing the door. (this would not be an expensive item to add to a field)
-put plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and steel cans on the field - points for separating and storing

To all those at FIRST - keep up the good work and Thank You