It sounds like the head referees at this weekends events need to meet with the GDC and decide if a change is needed, and if so, be sure it doesn’t make the problem worse. I hated the way penalties decided matches in 2005, and I do not want that to rule the game this year. BUT, We all knew the rules before this weekend started, a new rule may be tough on some teams that are already avoiding this penalty.
After reading this thread, this is what I hear:
I don’t like this rule. Change it.
What is this? Complaining wiil get you nowhere and I doubt this rule will be changed. Yeah, so there have been really nice matches that could’ve bee close if it weren’t for that 1/16" bit of bumber that broke G22, but that’s life. I quote:
Next to Copioli, this guy makes the most sense. (Thank you.) C’mon, y’all, hate the players, not the game.
I haven’t been to any matches, so all I have to go on is videos I have watched online. It does seem like a very large number of penalties are being called. This should at least cause the GDC to take a look at the rule.
I do think that lessening the penalty in autonomous mode would be a good idea. It seems as though this year’s game was designed to try to get more teams to try to do autonomous operations. Having a big penalty is just going to discourage the least experienced teams from trying to do much in hybrid mode.
I honestly think Copioli nailed it. We’ll be nailing down drivers on Thursday at Chesapeake, and I’ll be training them to make turns with a bit more technique. More specifically, I’ll be telling them to get well clear of the lane divider before turning, especially in traffic. Even if getting closer to the field barriers is a bit slower, I do not want us getting these penalties. The more you can be sure about your clearance, the better.
I think I like this solution better than any of the other ones I’ve seen so far, something that would give you a few seconds to correct your mistake, instead of x amount of inches leeway. It would keep the intention of the rule, without being so strict.
I agree. I hope this does not affect too much the 1st week regional teams and hope that the change of the rule (if there will be one) will help make the following regionals become more fair and less tense for the drivers so that we can see the max out of them.
I’m not so sure I agree, because this allows teams to go as far back as they want without penalty, with a fast robot this can mean acquiring a ball that would have been lost, which does effect the outcome of the game. I would say that a possible combination of the two might be better. What Dave suggested plus a time:
Once a team has completely passed over the lane divider, they can not go fully past the line or break the lane divider plane for more than 5 seconds, this prevents ball chasing (keeping the rules intent), and gives more maneuvering room.
I agree the rule has been there all along but from my 3 previous years of driver experience (year #4 this season), it is already hard enough to see across the field and deal with driving when there are robots blocking your view. I can only imagine how hard the poly carb makes this task this year. From our practice at home, it will be very hard not to cross the line that is vertical on the field when trying to get a trackball or avoiding other robots since there is very little room to maneuver in that area of the field. I watched enough of the webcasts to realize that too many matches are being decided by penalties and that something should be done. Matches should not have this many penalties. I really don’t agree with assessing points in Hybrid mode since this type of task has already been hard enough from some teams. Maybe change it to “completely entering a new quadrant” or reduce the amount of penalty points assessed/limit the total number of penalty points. Or going to the old pinning count down would be a good way to go about this. You have 5 seconds to return to the right side or something. Even removing the Hybrid penalties would be nice, I can’t recall ever being in a match where penalties were given in non teleoperated mode in the past 3 years of my experience.
G22 shouldn’t be changed. It’s a totally reasonable rule.
Take a little time and slow down and make that turn. Don’t go after a trackaball you can’t, and pull back from a robot jam if you can’t see.
No ref likes to give out penalties. That doesn’t mean they are going to fix the rules so they don’t have to hand them out.
It seemed like the more the teams played, the less the rule was being violated. Maybe we can get used to it the way it reads. The heartbreaker is that I did not see anyone get the penalty that was blatantly going full speed with every intention of getting back into the quadrant they just came out of, no one was willingly breaking the rule (OK, we should and did penalize the way off course Hybrid errors and we still should). The intent of the rule was to keep robots going counter clockwise, it did that very well, I just do not think that a couple inches beyond it worth loosing ten points. Most times they only moved back a couple inches due to a traffic jam in front of them with no way around. How many impeading penalties were called and how may times did they not get penalized because another robot was pushing clockwise? The problem comes from the fact that this is the same area the trackballs tend to end up and that is where everyone is making their turns. It seems to get crowded at the ends of the field much faster.
My solution to this would be to make a the stripe the same width as the finish line with the stripe in front of the current line (counter clockwise). Then have a clarification in the rules something along the lines of: A Robot will be considered to be past a Lane Marker or Finish Line when it is physically possible to determine that the robot is completely past the far edge of the Lane Market or Finish Line when traveling in a counter clockwise direction. A Robot will be considered in violation of <R22> when it is physically possible to determine that any part of the robot passes over the far edge of a Lane Marker or Finish Line in a clockwise direction once it has been determined the robot crossed the Lane Market or Finish Line in a counter clockwise direction. Giving them up to 80 inches of robot just seems a little excessive to correct a problem that usually only envoles a couple of inches.
I think that the rule should stay just as it is.
It’s my opinion that the GDC wanted this to not only be a fast game but a game about control of that speed.
We were at BAE, and the rule there was strictly enforced. We are a lap bot (with Skid steer) getting between 4 and 8 laps per match. In the 16 matches that we played (10 seeding, 6 elimination) we got a grand total of 1 penalty, and that was basically driver error. We are lucky to have an experianced drive team, and as such we were able to avoid alot of the penalties that other teams were gathering.
My suggestion: Do not change the rule … change the way your drivers are driving. Keep your robot under control.
To those of you who are saying “duh, just don’t run into congestion”, I submit to you the following exhibits. Note that when you are standing in the rightmost player station (Red/Blue 3), you cannot see what is going on at the transition into the opponent’s home zone. The reflection of the diamond plate on the polycarb makes you feel like you can see straight through to the player station, when really there is a robot hiding back there. I haven’t made up my mind on whether the rule needs to be changed, but the situation is not as easy as an armchair coach might think.
(Thanks to Joe Pernick and Jim Zondag for bringing this to my attention.)
That’s exactly one of the actions that causes these penalties most often. If you’ve already crossed the line, see a traffic jam, and try to back up, you get a penalty.
I don’t think there’s much more to say other than… :eek:
that is a really great point, and the pictures illustrate it very well. I guess a solution would be to make sure the “blind spots” are brightly lit from the other side of the polycarbonate, and hopefully you would be able to see the area a bit better.
As the driver this year i have a few comments to make that might add to the discussion. My last match (and an unfortunate number of my other matches) was decided by one ten point penalty, we went from being up by six to down by two. Now, I have not looked at match footage yet so i do not know what the infraction was like on the part of my alliance partner, but i did notice something today. Glare is the worst thing to contend with in this game. I truly feel bad for the teams with lightly colored robots and even worse unpainted aluminum. In some driver stations I can only see the bumpers of my robot because they are dark blue.
I without any exaggeration could not see how many robots were on the other team. I was totally convinced there was only one robot on the other side before hybrid started. I had to look at the screen to realize how many robots there were.
It is very difficult to see white with all the glare and unfortunately the line is white and parallel with the poles of the lane divider making it very difficult to see the line’s exact position.
I think after further analyzing what we have seen this weekend most of the infractions were on the side opposite the alliance (with the exception of bots crossing the line while hurdling which i feel is a team’s fault in design rather than an oversight by the GDC) We should certainly leave it up to the GDC to decide how to react to these unfortunate circumstances. Hopefully for the game’s integrity they will make a small adjustment to cope with these problems whether it be choosing a more contrasting color for the line or decreasing the penalty’s severity.
yeah i dont like the rule either, or any rule for that matter 
but even if it was changed… all the week one regions would have to be replayed because it would totally change the outcome…
Was the penalty for poor arithmetic skills? :rolleyes:
I was only a spectator at BAE, but the number of penalties per match seemed excessive. At one point, the announcer even said “not a lot of penalties in this match – only two”. The fact that a low-penalty match had a total of 20 points deducted is probably not what the GDC intended.
Imagine someone watching this game who didn’t know FIRST, and seeing 4-5 penalties in many matches. Would they come away with a sense of the gracious professionalism that the teams displayed, or would they come away thinking that FIRST teams like to play dirty, and can’t even follow the rules? I think the proposed rule change in post one would greatly improve the game from a spectator’s point of view, not to mention from the team’s point of view.
Wow. They don’t even look like the same picture. I see a market for custom polarized safety glasses with the plane of polarization rotated 90 degrees from standard sunglasses.