In previous years, I have been dismayed by what I saw as an apparent lack of consistency when interpreting and enforcing rules. I think clarity and consistency is good in general, but with FIRST, I felt that the lack of these attributes had hurt the performance of my team, so I took the offensive and created quite the stir. But I’m over that now.
When this year’s rules were released, I thought for sure that FIRST would continue its slide downward - the direction I had seen it go since I became involved in 2001, when all four teams were on the same side. I thought this because this year’s rules specifically allowed aggressive game play, tipping (as long as not pushing high), and other “defensive” strategies. I thought that this year would be another step for FIRST down the road towards battle bots, which I felt that despite all the talk, FIRST was slowly headed to, in the name of “excitement” or something like that.
Fortunately, I seem to have been completely wrong. Penalties, or “rewards to the opposition for good behavior” as I like to call them, have put this year’s game squarely back into the on-field strategizing and problem-solving that I think makes it considerably more interesting.
I have heard that at many regionals penalties seemed to be out of control - as in, most games were decided by penalties rather than other aspects of the game play. This seems amazing to me, because at the only regional I saw, the Pacific Northwest Regional, penalties played almost no role. Certainly, some were assessed (not as may as at other regionals it would seem), but in general, it didn’t seem that matches were decided by penalties.
And why not, you may ask? I believe it is because at the Pacific Northwest Regional, rules were enforced (almost) uniformly, consistently, and clearly. The way the rules are written this year makes enables this in ways I didn’t realize until I saw the games played out. Instead of “intentional” tipping, we have tipping “by pushing high”. Certainly, this is still subjective, but it is much less subjective. Less subjectivity makes consistent enforcement much easier. Likewise, there is no worry about “intentionally” hitting somebody in a loading zone. Its much simpler: if you hit somebody in a loading zone, its over: You loose. Please come again.
Rather than getting mad at all these penalties, like a few people on these forums have done, I think they are wonderful. It is very clear what you can and cannot do. If you are on your opponent’s turf, stay away from their loading zones. Don’t even think about going there. If you do that, you will be fine. Its really not that difficult. Our team had zero - read it ZERO - penalties in 17 matches played. We even played defense quite a few times near the end of matches.
Our success was straightforward - we adhered to a simple rule: stay away from their loading zones. We let them pick up tetras. Then we engaged the tetra, blocking it however we could. Defense for our team was very effective. I don’t think anyone ever scored when we were trying to prevent them. So I don’t understand these “penalties destroy defensive strategies” posts either. It simply isn’t true. Certainly, penalties stop you from randomly bouncing round the field causing havoc and destroying robots, but thats not defense. Thats just dumb.
While the Pacific Northwest Regional was well-refereed, in general, I think we can still do a little more to make it more consistent. Once, my team should have been penalized, for (very lightly) touching a tetra on the auto-loader before we were in the zone. This only happened once, but we should have been penalized. I don’t know why we were not. The second inconsistency I saw was a team’s robot getting whalloped in the human loading zone while a human was loading the robot. The referee watching the play didn’t throw any flags. I was amazed. This was exactly what the penalties were meant to prevent, and it was not assessed. An otherwise exceptional referee-ing team simply ignored us when my team went to tell them what had happened. I tried to explain that we were not involved in the match and didn’t care how it turned out, only that the rules be enforced. But we were ignored.
While those two instances were unfortunate, they were definitely the exception in Oregon. Overall, the referees did an excellent job.
Now, here’s to hoping that after the Championship, I will be able to say the same thing. All that it takes is making the calls consistently. This year’s rules seem to effectively (although unexpectedly) hold off the bullies. Its really an amazing set of rules, and FIRST should build on the successes that rewarding teams that play cleanly (aka penalties) provide. They are the best tool for molding on-field behavior towards good game play and away from robot-bashing, without eliminating robot interaction altogether.
Long live good rules, good referees, and good rewards!