The Dark Side of the 2013 game

FIRST General Forum
1

Last year in Rebound Rumble, the Coopertition Bridge offered a way for alliances to help each other on the field. It was a real crowd pleaser when it happened.

It offered a bit of a chokehold too. We were a rookie team last year, bad shooting percentage (almost non-existent), but we could climb a bridge. In post season play we actually made it to rank 2 one time by climbing the Coopertition bridge more times than anyone else, so it may have been weighted a bit heavily. (we were 96/99 in our district in regulation play!)

But this year there is no such way to cooperate on the field. And what I am seeing is, in elimination matches the game is getting a bit rough. There is a lot more bumping then, pinning, brushing by a robot which is sticking partly out of the tower cage to make it miss, and even some occasional robot toppling. Yellow cards. There are interactions which are not for the faint of heart. You hope you built your robot tough enough to be ready for the next match.

I am hearing the comments in the stand, in contrast to last year, things that can’t be repeated here.

Since this is only our second year, what are some of the long timers take on this considering past years? Is there any cooperation action they could have added to the game?

2

Even I’m relatively new to FRC still (06/07 season), but I think you’d need to watch even older match footage to see really rough match play :stuck_out_tongue:

I actually love that this year finally allows for rough and defensive play. More so than the last few seasons. I love it! Imagine this without bumpers, oh how awesome that would be.

As for the coopertition/cooperation stuff: I was not a fan of that last year. It did not always allow for proper seeding of the best robots in the top and it isn’t fun when your ranking depends on your opponent being able to balance with you or not.

3

05 still allowed defensive wedges. This led to a lot more flipped robots.

04’s step saw a fair number of robots that would get shoved off.

03 was full on autonomous ramming on top of a ramp.

Bumpers? What are those?

This ain’t rough guys. Our bot took a bit of a beating in Orlando but nothing like the damage robots used to take.

4

The past few tears, defense has always seemed relatively light compared to this year. As Aakash said, older FRC is A LOT more brutal than even this year. I love this years game and think the amount of defense allowed is great,and very excellent for forming the game’s own “meta game”(pro League of Legends fan here). This overall leads to a much more dynamic game.

I loved the coopertition bridge last year, but I don’t see any way something similar could be used in this game.

As for negative comments in the stand,that’ll happen every year no matter what, and sadly its an unavoidable inevitability.

5

I remember needing to take a sawzall to 1075’s 2004 frame after a head-on fullspeed autonomous collision at the Wonderland Invitational, because the frame bent so far the wheels couldn’t turn any more. We had an awesome auto, and defending it just meant “ram them full-speed”.

1075 in 2003 though, had bumpers before they were cool. Full-speed auto ramp ramming. Fun times. I miss the days when your robot fell apart if you didn’t build it to take a beating.

6

Coopertition was a great showcase of FIRST values, but it really hurt elims play. While it was great for newer/less-capable teams to make it into elims, I speculate that very few of the teams that ended up as alliance captains without effective scoring found much success; since the alliance captain and first pick are the primary scorers on an alliance, if the captain is a defender w/balance they have a severe handicap. I wouldn’t mind if co-op added a second order sort criteria (sort robots based on QS, then co-op, then auton) or a fractional amount of QS, but I like this years system better.

A lot of the reason defense is so aggressive this year is because of the open field; not the lack of coopertition. Last year the bump limited many robots to primarily one side of the field (bridge traversal worked but wasn’t good for running back and forth). This years game encourages alliances to leave their own turf for easy game-pieces, and the game pieces don’t obstruct traffic when they litter the floor.

I personally like the visceral game play (as long as nobody gets hurt), it adds a lot to the action.

7

I wouldn’t call defense “the dark side”…that sounds far too ominous.

My experience goes back to 1998, when there weren’t even alliances much less coopertition. Oh, and no bumpers either.

I can remember seeing steel framed robots designed to punish. I remember teams rewinding motors to get the performance they wanted. I remember collisions so hard that steel welds broke and bolts went flying.

FIRST has come a long way since then. And, yes, I’ve observed that newer teams have been surprised when good defense shows up. But, if it’s clean defense (no contact inside the frame perimeter, no long distance ramming, etc) then it’s part of the game.

Speaking specifically about my team (FRC 2789), we play hard stifling defense. Heck, we’ve cleanly played defense under our opponent’s pyramid. The bot has dents and scratches galore. And yes, there is risk to this strategy. We’ve accidentally committed penalties, we’ve had disagreements with referees, we’ve had arguments with teams. But, after actually looking at the rules and discussing the situation, emotions tend to die down and things generally go in our favor. Oh, and we’ve been picked by a #1 and a #2 seed, and been Finalists and Winners this year.

So, just because it lowers the score, don’t think defense is all bad. Actually, it can lead to some more exciting matches when a good defender can shut down a good scorer by exploiting a weakness.

All part of the game.

8

Defense is beautiful this year it allows for younger teams and teams with less resources to out play,out defend older more expirenced team that arnt used to having to think multi demensionaly.forcing these teams to take defense into mind and strategy that was close to non existent last year

9

There were some nasty collisions in the pre-bumper, pre-red card era, but I’ve seen some collisions this year that are just as violent as in the 2002-2007 heyday of defense. That’s what you get with a relatively wide open field (to <28" tall robots) and a proliferation of 6+ motor, high traction, and inexpensive 2 speed drives. The drive train arms race is at an all time high level of escalation.

10

I don’t feel that the defense has been too heavy this year, especially considering that penalties have been very harsh.

11

We are a 5 year team, and are still in the process of building our program. We often dream big in terms of robot design and either run out of time, don’t have enough mentors, deal with materials sponsors pulling out, etc.

Needless to say, we don’t always wind up with the robot we want, but try our best to make due with what we have. One of our team’s strongest suit is our ability to read and break down the rules to make the best out of our competition experience. This plays out by us determining the best defensive strategies allowed by the rules.

As JEE7S said, we play stifling defense, and we play it proudly. In the past three years we have consistently either been in a picking position or been picked for elims, and as we have seen, matches in elims have fundamentally different dynamics than matches in quals. Defense is part of the game, and as someone else pointed out on another thread, these competitions aren’t engineering exhibitions, they’re games with strategies, and as with any game, regardless of what mechanisms we have, we will play as graciously, professionally and competitively as we can :slight_smile:

12

I think a lot of it has to do with where you’re playing.

In MAR, specifically the portion of which that once would have been The Philadelphia Regional, Defense this year is something else. On one hand, it’s really nice to finally be able to ‘escort’ a robot around the field without fear of penalties as long as you steer clear of the protected zones, but on the opposite, fixing your robot after every match (especially Eliminations) gets old really fast.

In our 20 or so matches played at Chestnut Hill, I think 6 or 7 of them ended with robots tipped over or otherwise immobile from ‘legal’ contact. A few teams got rammed into the pyramid in such a way that they were more or less high centered on the 10pt bar which was really, really interesting to see. IIRC, in one match of our qualification matches, two of three robots had been rendered immobile by the 1 minute mark.

13

As someone involved in FRC since 08, it doesn’t seem to be any rougher than the average, the only aspect that seems to add to it is the pyramid.

In one instance we pushed an opposing bot out of our way so we could shoot and they got stuck on the pyramid but I believe we got penalized for that as well.

There was a lot more opportunity for carnage in breakaway with the potential to flip bots near the bump.

14

In 06 bumpers were introduced and were optional. Our robot from that year
still has a bent rear frame from taking a bad hit but it wasn’t bad enough to
keep it from running. Agressive defense has its good and bad points.

15

Back in the day, our team built a robot with a ridiculous steel frame and absolutely destroyed another team’s weak aluminum frame. We ended up on their alliance, and we took a sawzall, some sheet aluminum, and box tubing and completely rebuilt their frame in about 1 hr. Even in rough play, GP was still there.

16

I agree with many of the posts above. I also agree with you that defense can seem mean spirited, especially when conducted by powerful, heavy robots. The offense and defense aspect is something I wish there was more of. If you check out Aim High in 2006, there were dedicated periods to offense and defense.

I have always found that the NJ/Philly/NYC area competitions are more for the strong-willed. Sometimes negative attitudes, salty language, etc. sneak their way in more than I’ve noticed at any other regional. It’s unfortunate, but I think inevitable and part of life. Like one of our other mentors said last week, students will learn from the most tense/stressful moments, and there won’t always be someone there to give you a high five and tell you you’re great. Is this an excuse? No, not really, just putting a positive spin on it.

17

These replies are exactly opposite what I expected. Having only started in 2012 I have a different perspective since the game moved to more and not less competitive. Actually quite a refreshing view point, thanks all.

I will tell my story. In the quarter-finals we ended up down a bot for repairs. Our team was pushing on two of their bots at the same time. The pushing match did not subside and I saw no ref reaction. One of their bots began to tip so I told the driver to barrel through. Flip. For this we were yellow carded even though we thought we were valid (perhaps because we enjoyed it too much?).

Oddly they never displayed the “corrected” score so I don’t know how much our penalty was but it was a 2 point loss. We actually ended up winning the quarter-final in the end by continued harassing by our bot in the 2nd and the arrival of the 3rd bot for the 3rd game.

Meanwhile my daughter 11 in the stands said “people were saying bad words daddy. They said ####”. The conversation went like this.

Husband: <censored>
Wife: Relax its just a robot
Husband: It is NOT just a robot. <more rant>

I think these robots somehow become and extension of their teams. If it is hurt, they feel it. I think of it as “just a machine” because I was there when it was built. Do I need therapy?

In another match, I saw a robot hit another front bumper to front bumper square. It was what would have just bumped most bots but because the 2nd bot was top heavy it went straight back and down. Yellow card and they lost.

I am in agreement with a lot of you that the defense of the game this year has been hobbled. We had a stationary full court shooter on our alliance and so then had to devote one robot to protect it, no shooting from it. Our defense was more or less a pushing match the whole time. Meanwhile they had two excellent mobile shooters to our one mobile shooter. This is why I don’t think with a stationary full court shooter on a team can they can win. If we could have eliminated the push-bot we could have assisted in defending our one mobile shooter. Or they could have gotten to the full court shooter if the other way around. Instead no change in the balance the whole match.

Seems kind of lame you have to penalized for what are now considered harsh defensive measures, that without there is not possibility of a win. Because of the penalties and the reaction to them it makes me feel like I’ve done something sleazy quite frankly. That is why I refer to it as ‘The Dark Side’.

But I’ll get over it. I’ve seen in the high scores thread how many fouls are occurring in the high stakes matches. There are those who are not afraid to defend in spite all the friction.

I also enjoyed reading the stories about damaged robots. Thanks for sharing. That could be its own thread. I wonder what kind of damage stories happened more recently and how they compare.

18

Just guessing, but you may have received a technical foul for G28: “Strategies aimed at the destruction or inhibition of ROBOTS via attachment, damage, tipping, or entanglement of ROBOTS are not in the spirit of the FRC and are not allowed.”

If you just hit someone and they happen to go over, that’s not a strategy. But if you are pushing them and have them partially tipped, and then either continue to push or move back and hit them again, that can look pretty much like a strategy.

19

“not in the spirit of the FRC and are not allowed”

That is the part that makes me think they’ve gone soft. Is the spirit of FRC that we just play an offensive game and show what the robot can do? This is mostly what we did during qualifying matches.

I think you are right about the strategy thing. But doesn’t it seem like a strategy could be to put one robot out of commission in the first of a 3 match final event? Or is that a red card? But some teams might say so what.

Another observation is that once point accumulation is so high, teams can afford lots of fouls. So does this mean once a team is an ultra high scorer they lose the spirit of FRC. Just sayin…

20

My interpretation of “not in the spirit of FRC” would be thinking, “hey, team XXXX, its team XXXX so I gotta destroy them!” or “our strategy is just to simply knock every robot over!”

And as someone who was behind the glass (opposite of 4281) in the match referenced above with a robot tipping over, I’m not gonna debate/argue over what the call was, but the confusion over the final score was due to the head referee initially accidentally giving the foul points to the wrong team. After the following match, this was announced and corrected.