New rule <R48-C> further emphasizes that the GDC wants this to be an offensive game.
Was anyone concerned that such a thing was going to be a viable strategy?
The GDC needs to write the rules once and let the game be what the game is going to be. There’s little that’s fun about being told exactly how to play with your toys.
Wow.
Thanks to the last few updates half of my defensive strategies have gone down the drain.
Team Update 10 should not include new gameplay rules.
Also, GDC should design games that encourage offense rather than rules that make defense illegal.
I really, really hope this doesn’t turn into another 2008.
It seems like more and more the GDC is trying to get us to play a very specific game a very specific way.
A good game shouldn’t need 1000 rules to work “the way they want it to”. Should games even have a “way” they want us to play?
Glad to hear the GDC is willing to make team’s entire robot designs and strategies illegal during Week 5 lest someone build a robot that wasn’t exactly the way they thought it would be.
I agree with you and dumb things like this, but there are instances where an update is warranted. a good example would be the 2008 opponent’s home stretch height rule… that rule had to go.
Just so we don’t forget our current good fortune, the new rule doesn’t make any designs suddenly legal or illegal. It only changes what you can or can not do with your robots.
Exactly how referees are going to determine “the flow of the MATCH” is going to be interesting. If two alliance members are playing defense and blocking opponent robots while a third opponent is not functioning, is that stopping the flow? Does the answer change if the robots are all in the same part of the field?
I’m think this game will require a lot of gracious behavior on the part of teams and referees. I’d hate to be a ref who has to determine if a pin was under 5 seconds or just over 5 seconds. That decision will determine the outcome of the match.
At least they’ve not (yet) changing the rules AFTER the first regionals like last year, or in 2003.
Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox
The GDC taketh away, but the GDC also giveth. Nobody has yet commented on this very important change:
<G30> Any ROBOT used during a MATCH must be in compliance with all ROBOT Rules (as defined in Section 4 – The Robot). Violation: [strike]RED CARD[/strike] PENALTY plus a potential YELLOW CARD
This restores the rule to what it was last year (<S04> in 2010). Without it, you could have received a RED CARD for something as simple as a BUMPER becoming loose and dragging outside the BUMPER ZONE.
again, nice catch Gary. I noticed that too and i almost went “really?” but then I realized the application you are referring to.
To be honest, this one really should be ref discretion, penalty for stuff like bumpers getting rammed so hard they fall off, yellow or red cards for repeated and obvious intention to break rules, etc.
I don’t find too much offense with the new rule on defense. I believe this is to prevent doing things like stopping the entire other alliance from reaching towers for end game or scoring ever again after the team doing the blocking took the lead. It really depends what they define as flow in the competition.
Also the loading station is a natural choking point. If there were 2 robots, there is a good chance they could have kept a robot trapped in there.
I think its a fair rule in that it prevents other teams from rendering a robot useless.
Such a strategy would have had the same effect as an infinite pin.
Can you have a 2 on 1 defense with this rule?
I like the intent of the change, but I think it will be called rarely, inconsistently, and somewhat arbitrarily.
Maybe we’ll be able to convince the head refs in Dallas and San Antonio that any double defense on 148 constitutes interrupting the flow of the match?
I think this is a good update. The GDC saw a potential chokehold and shut it down before week 1. Honestly, I wouldn’t want this game to turn into hang the top row faster than the other team, block the other team from hanging tubes the rest of the match, and deploy minibots at the end. That wouldn’t be a very fun game to watch (IMHO). That said defense is still allowed (mostly in the mid field) which keeps things interesting but allows the game to remain “flowing”. Remember Lunacy with the huge 6 robot pile-up clumps as teams tried to score on each other? I never want to go back to that again. I believe that this is a step away, and in the right direction.
That said, I feel bad for the refs. They will have many tough calls ahead with all the subjective penalties.
Now this update is going to bring back some dead debates all over again.
On a personal note, I like the update. As mentioned before it takes away a choke-hold, and cuts down on un-necessary (IMHO) defensive play. I’ve always interpreted this from the begging as an offensive game, and this to me really should tell teams at this point that yes we’re frowning on more then basic defense.
However…
I feel that this rule could cause some backlash. While it should have been taken care off, I agree with the rest of you It’s too late!
For most teams, this will simply be a strategy hold, and the majority of teams who were planning on using this tactic, were doing it with robots designed for other tacts (based on my theory of all you need is some movable robot, that can’t be pushed to play good defense). However, there is at least 1 team out there who made this there cornerstone strategy, has a almost build robot designed with special mechanisms for it, and now has to go to the drawing board and try to salvage their season.
Had they caught on to this even just 2 weeks ago, I would have been fine with it, but it’s too late.
I love FIRST with all my heart, but sometimes I feel the GDC just needs to let it go, and have things take the natural course.
This is an awful update, atleast for week 5. This should have been shut down in week one, as should all major strategy changing rules. I know for a fact that there was atleast one team planning to make an extending blocking robot. If two teams teamed up to do that, they could shut down the entire scoring zone, and effectively lock opposing robots into their zones.
My team considered that as a Chokehold strategy this year, but decided it was implausible to use it, since its unlikely that there will be two of such types of robot in one alliance during qualifications.
If a team decided to use this as their strategy, they don’t have enough time to change it now. They are very far up a certain creek.
I also feel that this update, along with the last few have been restricting the game play a bit too much. I’ll reserve my final judgement for when I see it played, but right now, this seems like an extremely restrictive game, both in gameplay, and in robot (minibot) design. The GDC seems to have decided exactly how the game is meant to be played, and have removed any strategy that doesnt fit their vision (launching minibots, spring minibots, heavy defense, etc…)
As a part of the team who has the Dragonfly defensive bot, I just want to clear up that we will just take this as another challenge. It only says your ALLIANCE cannot team up to block the field. I don’t see this being an issue.
We’ll see how the regional plays out. 
You’d have a case on triple defense on 148 or some of the other perennial powerhouses, John. Double defense? Maybe, but I’d assume that you guys are to busy scoring through it to pay any attention–and anybody playing any less than double defense is getting beaten handily anyway.
That’s kind of my fear, too–if I’m parking a robot between my towers and playing defense on any robot trying to go through that gap, am I going to be called for blocking the flow of the game? I hope not! But I would not be surprised if any team doing that was be called.
Love this update!
I was dreading the ‘score first then shut down all scoring’ tactic, because it commits one of the worst sins of FIRST: It renders the game boring.
I know, I know, some people will disagree with me on what does and does not constitute ‘boring’, but I think of things from the perspective of the casual spectator. It MUST be exciting to non-participant spectators (e.g. friends, family, classmates, and invitees of those on the teams) in order to fulfill it’s mandate of changing the culture.
Lunacy: reasonable fun to play, boring to watch as a casual observer (because it was too hard to keep track of everything going on if you weren’t nails-on with the rules). GDC solution: hire people who specialize in entertainment. And GOOD FOR THEM.
Logomotion: both boring to play AND boring to watch if this strategy is enacted.
Defense isn’t outlawed, you just have to give the other teams a chance.
Woot, I say. Woot!
After the unintentionally defensive game “Breakaway”, which followed the best FIRST game ever (abbreviated as “Lunacy”), I assume that the GDC wished to make the game a real shootout, which I enjoy.
Lunacy was hard to keep track of scoring, but everyone cheered when there was a mass dumping of balls into the trailer, or the super cells got in in a close match. The fact that the tally was too hard to keep up with caused so much suspense. It was borderline impossible to play defense in Lunacy; while in Breakaway a team always defaulted to a defensive position. Also, 2010 could really get lagged down by the penalties, specifically the return penalty. There seem to be more penalties this year than there are pounds on the robot, so I fear that.
Offense was encouraged already because your secondary score (Qualifying Score?), which operates as a tiebreaker from your Ranking Score, is based off of the losing team’s unpenalized/penalized score, depending on which side of the match the team landed.
However, I don’t know how much tubes will factor in to final scores when compared to the minibot race. The Best FIRST Game Ever and Breakaway were able to remedy this issue. I just get this feeling that a close 40-35 minibot race will be outdone in the qualifiers by tube scoring.
On another note:
It sounds odd, but I have been waiting for the minibot race to go 25-20-15-10, or something even smaller. The tube score, I believe, will be rendered almost meaningless in the qualifiers.