For your convienence,
Per updated and editted Q&A, here is my understanding of wierd language in rule <SG8>, regarding multiple Doubler and Negator barrels.
And misc other scoring Q&A, per June 1 rules updates, all here in one place.
Doubler and Negator only affect only circular goals, not floor goals.
Objects that look like they are scored in two goals at once (balanced across the fence) dont count for either goal, due to new June 1 definition for scored.
Circular goal boundaries extent infinitely vertical, so stacking above goal poles still counts as scored.
Descoring a circular goal by scraping off a protruding object is allowed.
No other descoring is allowed from circular goals; once in, always in.
Not allowed to lift and jam in a new bottom piece to get the bottom bonus.
Any number of Doublers in one circular goal make that goal as doubled.
Any number of Negators in one circular goal make that goal as negated.
The doubled and negated attributes cancel each other.
Examples of practical effects:
You can cancel the effects of a Negator barrel by adding a Doubler barrel.
You can cancel the effects of a Doubler barrel by adding a Negator barrel.
Any circular goal with 1 or more Doublers, AND 1 or more Negators, counts as normal; Adding more D or N doesn’t affect it.
Balancing a D or N barrel across two goals doesn’t affect either of them.
This is an unofficial interpretation of the June1, 2011 rules update.
I could be wrong, and/or the rules can change later.
I see judging being a challenge this year especially with de-scoring of protruding objects that are marginally above the top of the circular goals.
For example, in this photo the top red ball can be de-scored if I understand the rules correctly, but can the next blue barrel? Is it protruding over the top? Is it scored by clause 1 or 2.
If there are more doublers than negators, the score is doubled.
If there are more negators than doublers, the score is negated.
Based on the picture, this is blue barrel could be descored. The top corner is clearly above the top plane of the goal, but a ref may think it has been scored by clause 1. I agree this could cause some challenge to refs.
But is it? Isn’t that just an illusion caused by the angle of view? To be honest I don’t remember, I took this photo a few weeks ago, but this type of situation may cause debate during competition and once removed it’s hard to prove either way.
No, that’s not right. Look again at this thread which is where you got your quote from, but look at the most recent post by Karthik. Only 1 doubler and only 1 negation barrel per goal “count”. Therefore, they cancel each other out. Therefore I believe jgraber’s statement is correct.
When I first read the rules, it was actually my first interpretation that only the closest one will count (see this post).
So now I’m glad we have a concrete ruling that (hopefully) won’t change
The Q&As conflict with each other, depending on which threads you look at (when they were answered), so I think it should be made more obvious that some of those answers have been changed and are now incorrect, so that everyone knows they have changed.
I agree. The rule as it stands (any 3 special barrels means no effect) is unintuitive, removes options, and is bound to confuse people. I preferred the interpretation where the first two would cancel and the third would behave as normal.
If my post here had anything to do with causing Karthik to revert to the manual rules rather than use the interpretation with which he answered this Q+A (linked above), then I’m sorry :(.
Of course, if a goal has room for three special barrels it probably wasn’t worth doubling/negating to start with, so I don’t think this situation will be common.
The “new” rule makes it simpler to score matches, which is what we all want, especially given the already-complicated scoring guidelines (by that I mean the doublers/negators and the “autonomous bonus” points).
As for that specific example of which clause is applied: http://img806.imageshack.us/img806/7008/scored.png
The top corner of the barrel is behind the white lines, which are on the plane of the goal, and because the camera angle puts us under the plane, the top corner of the barrel must be above the plane.
Sorry for getting so specific…
I don’t think a negator can un-negate a negator. Negators only negate when they are the first negator in a goal (the second negator doesn’t negate the first negator). If there’s already a negator in a goal, you could put a negator into it to negate the negator that you added, but the goal is still negated. (I think, or we may need to negate this whole paragraph)
Maybe thinking of it this way will help intuition:
You can’t double a doubler, so multiple of the same don’t count.
That part of the rule takes effect first, then comes the part about cancellation between D & N.
The <SG8> as stated “only lowest one counts” is confusing;
it doesn’t matter whether it is lowest or highest, just one of them count.
Unless your robot is touching the lower one, then your alliance does not get the bonus. That’s how I read the rule and is the only reason why it might specify which barrel actually counts.
It has to do with making the scoring more intuitive.
By crafting the rules this way, we’ve essentially eliminated it from happening (what team would be silly enough to double up now that it has been nulled) which happily removes a few “weird” situations.
It definitely eliminates a handful of strategies, but none that would have a major effect on gameplay.
Also – those doublers and negators are only out for 30 seconds max and they start pretty spread-out… I’m thinking of the white-balls from VEX Clean Sweep and remembering how short a time the endgame can be.
Yes, this is the precise reason we specify it, and one of the major reasons this rule was written this way.
If we had changed the rule to allow multiple doublers and negations to count in the same goal, you can create some very head scratching scenarios when it comes to robots touching them.
/Edit: Didn’t see John’s post which makes mine somewhat redundant
Based on the examples, I offer this unofficial summary for discussion here:
Scores are D,N calculated independently for Red and for Blue.
If you are touching a scored bottom D, it doesn’t apply to you.
If you are touching a scored bottom N, it only applies to you.
The normal “apply to you” is spelled out explicitly in the rules
The D&N cancellation part of “applies to you” is not explicit, but exists;
see cases L,M,N summarized below:
L) R,B, Dtr, N == Red 0, Blue 1 : Red-N, Blue-DN
M) R,B, D, Ntb == Red 4, Blue 1 : Red-D, Blue-DN
N) R,B,Dtr,Ntb == Red 2, Blue 1 : Red-, Blue-DN
O) R,B,D,N,Dtr == Red 2, Blue 1 : Red-DN, Blue-DN, non-bottom D has no effect)
The ‘only bottom special counts’ rule means that only the first special barrel of each type counts - all other specials are completely irrelevant and don’t count at all in any circumstance, regardless of if they are touched or not.
That rule takes precedence over the ‘touching a special makes you get the bad effects’ rule.
That rule takes precedence over the ‘one doubler cancels one negator’ rule.
That rule takes precedence over ‘doubler = x2 for all and negator = x0 for all’ rule.
i.e. Second sentence of <SG8> takes precedence over <SG3> which takes precedence over the first sentence of <SG8> which takes precedence over the normal scoring rules. Might be worth splitting <SG8> into two clauses.
Feel free to correct me if I’ve interpreted it incorrectly.
(Also big kudos to Karthik for going over all the scenarios and answering them for us! :D)
I think some sort of visual flowchart that shows how to score goals with weird special barrel scenarios would be really helpful. Just something that shows the order the rules should work in as far as touching special barrels and multiple special barrels in one goal.
