When I read the game manual for change-up I was excited to see that the rule regarding match replays had been updated to specify some circumstances that the rule would apply to.
Here is the rule:
Match Replays are allowed, but rare. Match Replays, i.e. playing a match over again from its
start, are at the discretion of the Event Partner and Head Referee, and will only be issued in the most
extreme circumstances listed but not limited to the following:
a. Field Fault issues that have directly affected Match play.
i. Game Elements not in the correct positions
ii. Tape lines lifting
iii. Field Elements detaching or moving beyond normal tolerances that is not a result of team play
violations.
iv. Autonomous Period or Driver Controlled Period ending early
v. Field Control disconnecting and disabling Robots. Not to be confused with a Robot that trips its
own PTC and has to reboot to reconnect the robot to controller, or teams with controllers that
have bent pins that affect only their alliance Field Control tower.
b. Game Rule issues that affect the outcome of a match.
i. Referee disables a robot for a misinterpretation of a rule violation.
ii. Referee starts the Driver Controlled Period without determining the outcome of the Autonomous winner.
iii. The field is reset before a score is determined.
The circumstances listed exclusively apply to issues with the field or mistakes of volunteers completely outside of a team’s control. However, nothing was included regarding other instances outside of a team’s control related to electronic failures and the shortcomings of the v5 system. This includes but is not limited to disconnects, blown ports, and whitescreens. These are rare circumstances that a team can not ever fully protect themselves from and could greatly affect the outcome of important matches.
At the drivers meeting for turning point worlds, they went into a bit more depth about this rule then the game manual said at the time. During the event they would replay disconnects only if it was a field control error as opposed to a disconnect between the robot and the controller.
I understand that if a team has their radio buried withing their robot and surrounded by wires and metal that will lead them to disconnect more often and in that circumstance, a disconnect would be the team’s fault, however, if a team has taken the necessary precautions on their part to improve the v5 system’s reliability then there is little more that can protect them from a disconnect. I think it would be helpful if vex were to release a guide for how to properly set up the system in order to maximize reliability.
In the past, their have been many issues with vex net that have affected the results of important matches in including matches in the dome. When a team loses due to an issue beyond their control in the last match of their season it is horrible. In the future more needs to be done to the replay rule to help prevent this.
I think that it if this rule is modified it is important to draw the line between what warrants a replay and what does not. A battery falling out of a team’s robot is their own fault and that match should not be replayed. A team putting their radio in a position that will increase the chance of them disconnecting is the teams fault. On the other hand, a team that makes a proper effort to minimize static on their robot and still blows a port or whitescreens causing them to lose the match is not their fault and that should warrant a replay. A team that properly sets up their radio and disconnects for a prolonged period of the match is not their fault.
I don’t know that this is exactly how this should be implemented however I think it is an important topic to discuss and the rule should be expanded upon to include circumstances such as electronic issues and a wider area of things where the team is not at fault.
As stated, electronics errors are rare circumstances. In addition to being rare, they are also difficult to diagnose. You cannot expect a fair and quality interpretation of such circumstances each and every time robot electronics fail.
In addition, Replays significantly impact tournament timing, provide an avenue for exploitation (especially in crucial moments), and require the tournament staff to investigate beyond that which they can be expected to judge fairly.
There exists an old adage:
“Give them an inch, and they will take a mile.”
It feels like this situation is no different.
All that aside, there is a lesson to be learned from failure- especially when the failure is no fault of your own.
As they put out the documents they put them all in the event partner resources page. I would advise everybody to check it at least once a month to see what’s out. That is the only comprehensive list of documents.
I just want to build on this. Teams design, build, and program the robot … Presumably, there is extensive testing. If there isn’t, how can you rule out your robot failure was not a design flaw? or come to competition, find out there are unexpected loads?
I know one of our teams suffered so-called White Screen of Death during competition early season. Through post-tournament analysis, the one thing that was different from practice/testing was high impact from other robots. To address that, the team put foam under the brain and the problem went away.
As stated, electronics errors are rare circumstances. In addition to being rare, they are also difficult to diagnose. You cannot expect a fair and quality interpretation of such circumstances each and every time robot electronics fail.
While electronic errors are somewhat uncommon circumstances, they do happen and can greatly affect the outcome of an important match. Having a system in place to deal with these rare events can increase the quality of such rulings.
In addition, Replays significantly impact tournament timing, provide an avenue for exploitation (especially in crucial moments), and require the tournament staff to investigate beyond that which they can be expected to judge fairly.
These are uncommon circumstances as stated above and often there are tournaments where they don’t happen at all. One or two extra matches are not unreasonable to ensure the event can be fair. I agree that this system would have to be created in a way that reduces exploitation. For a robot that whitescreens early in the match, it is as simple as checking the color of its screen. Referees need to be able to see the robot after the match before the team can touch it.
All that aside, there is a lesson to be learned from failure- especially when the failure is no fault of your own.
Of course, failure is inevitable but when it is completely outside of a team’s control blowing it off as a valuable lesson takes away from the integrity of the competition.
How many teams would have experienced this and said, “Vex hardware problem, not our fault” and done no further analysis?
Agreed. My team has played about 50 matches in each of the last 2 years and had 1 electronics failure in each. Our 2% failure rate would be closer to “rare” than “common” or “frequent”. If the team’s season success is defined by one match, I’ve done something wrong. Yes, even if that match is the finals or Worlds.
Rare adj. (of an event, situation, or condition) not occurring very often
I think it can be said that V5 failures happen pretty often. Almost nobody has a V5 brain with 21 functional 4p4c ports. Many don’t have functioning micro-usb ports. Motors die a lot; about 30% of the motors in my team’s box either don’t work or are unreliable. The batteries had an issue where plugging them in for too long would completely kill them.
While electronic errors are somewhat uncommon circumstances, they do happen and can greatly affect the outcome of an important match. Having a system in place to deal with these rare events can increase the quality of such rulings.
Yes, of course they do happen. And yes, they can affect the outcome of a match. Three points:
1.) There are no rulings in such cases - the rules are clear
2.) Each electronics failure has a high likelihood of being unique: how can you determine which failures are a failure of the team, and which failures aren’t?What happens when two rare failures occur at different events, but are ruled differently?
These are uncommon circumstances as stated above and often there are tournaments where they don’t happen at all. One or two extra matches are not unreasonable to ensure the event can be fair. I agree that this system would have to be created in a way that reduces exploitation. For a robot that whitescreens early in the match, it is as simple as checking the color of its screen. Referees need to be able to see the robot after the match before the team can touch it.
I want to be clear when I say this: as long as everyone plays under the same rules, equally constrained and equally enforced, the tournament is fair.
The impact of a replay on a tournament isn’t just the time it takes to run two extra matches.
It’s a combination of:
The time it takes to reach a conclusion.
The time it takes to clarify the replay to each team involved
In critical matches, the action of enforcing a replay puts the onus of a correct outcome on the referees to enforce, and not the students to ensure minimal failure.
White-screen is an effect, with some indeterminate cause: possibly even of your own making. @lacsap gave an example in his reply. In such cases, it is not fair to punish the team that thoroughly tested their own robot. In the real world, the manufacturer and product designers are entirely liable for faults in their product. I see no reason why Vex should be any different.
Of course, failure is inevitable but when it is completely outside of a team’s control blowing it off as a valuable lesson takes away from the integrity of the competition.
Absolutely not.
1.) Things happen. It’s important not just to understand that failure outside of your control happen, but also to accept the failure as your own when they do.
2.) The integrity of the Vex competition is best ensured by providing students with an accurate overview of the engineering world- not by over-simplifying the problems.
I don’t mean to be harsh, but I do think you’re only considering half the picture.
Honestly a lot of the robot malfunctions that happen in matches probably could have been prevented by the team, and it’s near impossible to tell if it was the fault of the team or a factor outside their control. But I also think that having replays for disconnects and whitescreens will just make the competition more enjoyable for everyone involved. It’s not fun to lose a match because of connection issues, and it isn’t satisfying to win a match because your opponent’s robot had a disconnect or a whitescreen.
And disconnects are rare, which means that only one or two extra matches would be played for events, which isn’t a lot. Seems like it’s worth it to me.
While it is true that doing replays for every disconnect seems like it is rewarding the team that didn’t take the effort to prevent these measures, this isn’t always the case. Static blowing ports is a common ailment of v5 and even teams that do everything in their power to prevent it can have it happen. It seems to vary from brain to brain. Whitescreening too seems to happen out of a team’s control a lot of the time.
But I don’t see a clear way to make it fair for teams that have out of control malfunctions, and also fair for teams that took preventative efforts to stop these issues from happening.
Another thing to consider is that ports blowing and whitescreening can be very confusing and unexpected for newer teams. New people to vex will be very trusting with the reliability of the electronics, and when ports blow and whitescreens happen, it can really be a huge let-down, especially when they don’t know how they could have prevented these incidents. Perhaps a resource on how to deal with port blowing and whitescreening is in order?
I agree. I think it would be helpful If vex were to release a guide for how to maximize their systems consistency. I know they have already done this for how to reduce static. If a team chooses not to follow this guide and has an electronic failure in a match that should not warrant a replay.
Our program is smaller than yours by a fair margin (perhaps 1/4 or 1/5 the total parts). However, we have 0 failed brain motor ports or usb ports on our 4 brains. We have 0 motors that I know to be permanently failed in our 40 motors - although we have overheated several and swapped them to the back of the drawer. We had one bad battery in 12, and vex replaced it. Failure rates for our teams on field have been very low: 2 white screens in 3 seasons. Disconnects for my teams are slightly more common, but my teams that had them also had poor build quality in general.
Defining rare does not address my statement that you need evidence. Without collecting evidence of the actual failure rate of hardware in match play (the crux of what we are talking about here, since this is about replays/hardware failures), you are not stating a valid argument. You are only venting frustration based on your personal/anecdotal experience.
There are no rulings in such cases - the rules are clear
I was referring to if the replay rule was changed to include a wider variety of instances.
Each electronics failure has a high likelihood of being unique
I disagree with this statement. The majority of problems that are not extremely rare have already happened to many teams. If a problem only happens to a team for the first time ever it is more likely that the team is at fault. This is because they could be doing something wrong with the system that caused them to have that issue.
how can you determine which failures are a failure of the team, and which failures aren’t?
This is an important question. You would have to look at what happened during the match and then look at their robot to see what the issue was. If a team had blown an intake motor port you would see that their intake stopped spinning and then after the match the light on the motor would be flashing. If this circumstance affected the result of the match I think it should warrant a replay.
1.) Things happen. It’s important not just to understand that failure outside of your control happen, but also to accept the failure as your own when they do.
2.) The integrity of the Vex competition is best ensured by providing students with an accurate overview of the engineering world- not by over-simplifying the problems.
Yes, things do happen, however in the engineering world if you have an issue with static you could modify your electronic components to protect them. This is not legal in vex, making some issues truly out of your control. I do not think that allowing a match to be replayed due to an issue with a vex electronic product is over-simplifying the problems.
Last season, my team had a big issue with blowing ports. We had a lift with a clamp on the end and the motors on the clamp always blew ports. We blew about a port a week. We probably lost 3 matches last season due to this issue. It turns out that we were blowing ports due to “floating metal”. We added a guide wire and never blew a port again. On the other hand, our sister team didn’t blow any ports but had a white screen at states. Somethings are in a teams control, others are not.
My team actually had our tilter motor die in our 7th qualifying match at the competition you hosted in tower takeover (which was great, by the way. 8756M is a pretty good team and I’m glad we were able to pick them). 2158 has had failing parts since September 5th, 2018, the day we received our first v5 kits. It is possible that we just aren’t as careful as your students with our parts, but, while we have only had maybe 5 whitescreens in 2 years across who-knows-how-many brains, other failures, specifically ports, have been pretty common. 2158R had to replace their brain this season, and I think the girls who code team managed to get theirs all the way to 2 working ports. My own team from TT, 2158C, lost 9 ports.
But I guess it could be a number of things, such as freshmen who are not careful with metal shavings, the massive static in our giant dehumidified workspace, and other things. The one thing I will stand by though is that the micro-usb port is not securely mounted to the motherboard.
As for disconnects, thats mostly not on vex. The radio position matters a ton, and my team has experienced almost no DCs with it not in a faraday cage.
I completely agree, and it is important to distinguish between the two. Vex already has a guide for reducing static related problems and if a team ignores that then a static related problem is on them.
I run events every year, and this is the trickiest part for me. I remember in Turning point, watching the round robin. When one of the bots had a disconnect, there were a couple of people right there, got to look at the controller in real time, and determined that it was a legitimate problem and warranted a replay.
For my VRC events over the past few years, I’ve never had what I would feel to be enough judges or refs. They are all great and do a wonderful job, but I’ve never gotten what I would call an ideal number.
To have an additional person there who would be comfortable making a call about a disconnect or motor problem… I don’t see it happening. The first year V5 came out I didn’t know anything about it, and I didn’t even know how to tell if a controller was disabled. There was nothing in the event partner docs to help us do it. I would still not be comfortable helping make those calls.
While a competitor knows their bot well enough to know what is true, I have also had a number of students lie to me in the heat and passion of the moment (verified later after the fact). I can never take word of a student, I have to know that it’s true with enough certainty that I feel comfortable telling that team that just won that it didn’t count and they have to try and win again.
It’s an impossible situation. People don’t volunteer. They don’t. For our state tournament, we didn’t turn away a single volunteer. Did I vet the referees to see if they knew any of the kids? Did I check and see if they were at least a few years out of the respective programs? Why would I? Did I have someone to replace them with? Could I just send 2-3 refs home and then have one head ref pair up with one scoring ref and they would just bounce from field to field in a pair?
I ran TM myself for the second day of the tournament, as the event partner because no one signed up to do the easiest job. We were doing everything on tablets, so it wan’t a terrible job, but it’s distracting when there are a number of things you need to do. There were times I had to verify 5-6 different scores because I couldn’t get back to the computer.
So, when I have 3-4 extra pairs of hands and eyes at my tournaments that understand the game and the V5 well enough to make those calls, I would love to do so.
Food for thought - I was watching the First Updates Now on YouTube about their 2020-2021 game. There was speculation that FTC may try to move towards the eSport format. The theory was that there would be a fairly static “base game”, but would “patch” the game each year - changing point values or constraints to keep the game fresh.
While reducing the challenge for competitors, and certainly imposing a competitive disadvantage to newcomers, it could make it easier on spectators and volunteers. Certainly cost was one of the driving factors for FUN’s speculation on this, with such a large financial commitment to field an FTC team.
What would the Vex community think about such a drastic change? In some ways, this years game seems not too far from this future - my son tried the Tower Takeover bot with the new Change Up field elements, and it doesn’t seem too far a stretch to tweak into a functional CU bot.