I was going to write some angry and long winded post about this update, but I’m in too good of a mood after watching this video.
Thanks 179.
Not surprised by this update, but a bit disappointed that it wasn’t taken care of earlier, especially after the multitude of Q&A’s. I’m sure the GDC will be catching quite a bit of flack for this, so I’ll just pose this question to teams out there. Who was actually planning on taking advantage of this loophole, and what is your plan now?
C’mon, the Q&A was asked what parts of the opponent’s bridge were legal to touch; the answer was none of it. Certainly the answer was not meant to create another way to score a balanced bridge. Of course this means of “balancing” would be disallowed.
My belief is that there are numerous ways to hang from the bridge, either on the end or side, without grabbing, grasping, or grappling. Since the GDC has refused to define what that means some are more suspect than others.
I think 179’s is clearly not grabbing, grappling, or grasping. That being said, the end of the bridge is pretty non-rigid (it’s nothing but unsupported polycarb/HDPE at that point. I have no idea how the GDC intends to handle that, or if “grab, grapple, or grasp” will be up to the judgement of the referees at each event.
You’re missing his implicit point. FIRST apparently can just change perfectly clear rules at any time, so there is no logical reason to believe any design or aspect of the game will remain the same at all.
All we have is “common sense”… But common sense to one is not common sense to another.
The fact it’s week 6 and we had some things based off the “official” answer to two QandA questions, that were “official interpretations”, yes I am surprised by it.
Engineering drawings don’t have gray area, the one they referenced even had the balloon breakouts labeling every part, and they used that twice as answers to what defined “the bridge”, you’d think if they were referencing a drawing they could at least read the list that is on the page for the sole purpose of quickly showing what is included in an assembly…
Tough luck for the teams who built a design around this concept, but I have to say I saw this one coming a million miles away. To me, it was always obvious that the intent of the rule was to get you to balance while only touching the top of the bridge. Since the Q&A that defined the bridge wasn’t related, you probably should have been a little more suspicious about this one.
I feel like they definitely should have had a ruling out on this sooner, though.
Even though this doesn’t affect us, this makes me really mad :mad:. I remember when I was at champs in 2008 and one of the teams had a base that couldn’t move and a crane that picked up the ball and moved it around the field. They won their regional, but the GDC screwed them between then and champs by changing the rules to make their strategy illegal. This seems wrong. Think how discouraging it would be to any teams who did use this strategy.
I don’t like the comparison to engineering either. This is not engineering, this is a sport. The objective is to compete within the framework defined by the rules. The rules should be static and not open to killing edge-case designs. No one changes the rules of hockey because they came up with a new play. Even battlebots had the decency to let Son of Wyachi ride it’s lawyering to a victory before changing the rules next season.
My 2 cents,
- Alex
This is not true. 190 was always in violation of the rules. It did not take a GDC ruling to figure it out. They just somehow managed to compete at one event regardless of the legality of their robot.
I’m a bit to steamed to make this long winded, so I’ll make it short.
I feel sorry for the teams I know that built short bots. It does slightly annoy me that a major part of the game is now illegal on week 6 because if mis-definitions.
But how could the GDC know this strategy without someone posting “Is the Bridge considered balanced if the robot is fully supported by something other than the top surface? (or ball ramp)”
-Nick
Imagine you were designing a product for a customer and they said - “we want a machine which will be able to balance on this bridge”.
What do you think your customer is going to say when you give them a machine that simply wedges itself underneath the bridge against the ambutments?
Really guys… is it that difficult to see that this is not what FIRST wanted you to do?
Against my better judgement, I can say the precedent was set in 2010 when the GDC allowed teams to elevate from the vertical parts of the Tower.
That being said, previous rulings from previous games do not reflect or hold true for current or future games. I can see both sides of this debate; I can also see which side is clearly “right” and intended by the rules. For those that wish to draw parallels to 71 in 2002 or 469 in 2010, those teams repeatedly, pointedly requested clarification to ensure their designs were in fact legal.
If they said “balance this bridge” I would ask “what is the bridge?, and what is balanced?” both of which we had black and white definitions for in this case. No lawyering, no stretching, nothing.
If you wouldn’t take that same approach what route would you take? The animation didn’t show that?
That’s an odd statement. It was never unclear – the specification was that you are above the platform and not supported by another robot; they never gave any guidelines as to how. (Indeed, the only reason you had to use the tower is because it was the only possible way to do it, and not because of some rules specificity.)
This is exactly what the teams who implemented this strategy were thinking. Word for word.
Agreed. However, as was stated before in this thread, all of the animation, pictures, promotional materials, etc. from Breakaway showed an elevated robot as hanging from the top, horizontal bars of the tower. That was clearly the intent of the GDC; when an innovative yet similar and exciting strategy was employed, they accepted it as viable without issue.
It’s also an odd statement to say a robot is not “on the bridge” if they gave the specification that “the bridge” is an assembly that includes a piece of lexan.
The only difference to me is that in one instance, the GDC changed the rules to outlaw a robot design, and in another, they didn’t.
Why is hanging from the side of a bar “common sense” but supporting yourself with a non-obvious piece of the bridge “lawyering the rules”?
Yes and no. I have maintained since I started doing FIRST in 2001 that teams who play to the spirit of the rules don’t run afoul of exactly these kinds of issues. It’s a risk, and sometimes it pays off (469 in 2010) and sometimes it doesn’t.
There’s something to be said for innovative gamesmanship, but there’s something to be said for doing what you KNOW is legal. Any time you think, “this is particularly clever!” you may well be right – but just because it’s particularly clever doesn’t mean it won’t bite you.
With due respect Aren, you’d have to go further than that. You’d have to ask your customer about the intentions, all forseen use cases and then still accept that there will inevitibly be grey definitions afterwards.
The vertical bars in 2010 weren’t made from a sheet of lexan…