Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

During finals, they have said the higher ranking team gets last positioning of robots.

In qualifiers I suppose they'll just have to flip a coin.

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

The point is NO ONE DOES. You have to tell the field manager what position all your bots will be in BEFORE you put them out. So pretty much you put them out blind to where the other alliance is putting their's. This is for qualifiers.

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

I thought that the jockeying only occurred in elimination rounds, depending on who was the higher ranked alliance, they got to place after the other alliance in the first match, then second match they switched. If there was a tiebreaker 3rd match, I forget what happened, maybe just the same as 1st match.

I don't know if there was any jockeying for qual matches, I don't think there was any rule about it. It seemed sometimes teams would hang back until they saw where the others were being placed, but sounds like this year when you get queued up you will have to tell the queuer, so that on-field jockeying shouldn't occur. Wonder if they will have anyone enforcing that as the robots go onto the field.

Edit: Good grief, 2 other posts during mine.

And ps. I wouldn't use the "ram" word lightly. The ramming penalties still apply during automode, so don't expect to have a "ramming" automode and get away with it too easily.

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

No robots left... nothing better to do!

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

Hm.

Not certain why it's ok during the match but not at the start of the match. But ok.

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

Make a couple BCD switches and place them on your OI. Select your opponents position just before autonomous begins.

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

Ha! I was not going to say it but that is what we were gonna do!

Re: Interesting Q/A's - Chicken
 

I'm not likening this. This means there could be more penalties and other small stupid quarrels about "O he wasn't in the right position". But then I do see the good in it. I like the intent but that puts even more work on the queuing manager. Hmm. I hope teams are prepared to talk about strategy before they get up in line...

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

:ahh: :ahh: :ahh: :ahh: :ahh:
Hold on one second! We have been told to hold the FIRST Q&As answers to be rules not interpretations! WHAT IS GOING ON!

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

I don't really understand this.

Either they are official, or they are not. They can't be UNofficial and then be used by all the refs/judges/inspectors as a basis to make calls against something. That just doesn't make sense to me.

There are a lot of good questions in the Q/As that were never released in Updates, but probably should be to be "official". There's a lot of good game/rules Q/As, but not a lot of game/rules updates. If we're going to have a Q/A to clarify the written rules or settle interpretation differences, then why can't they be official rules or incorporated into updates...

This implies Q/As are official:
Yet they say they are not official.
So basically, "when necessay" is when we see a call made that goes against what the Q/A system says, then we can whip them out of our back pocket and show where we justify our argument.

So maybe they aren't official "rules", but they will be considered official "rulings" when the time comes. To me, it's the same thing I guess.

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

I was the one who asked the question. I also know that you are not allowed to bring rules to the refs. Inspectors may be another issue. I also stated in my question that only an answer in the official updates would be a valid response. How can something that is not official state that they have the official interpretations? Last year teams were told that it didn't matter what the Q&A said it was only the official updates that mattered. I was trying to clarify that this year but seem to have only muddied the water.

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

They said in the referenced link to your question that if you want to show the officials the Q/As, then to print them out and take them with you. So long as it's a student driver/operator/HP, they should be able to show them the Q/As and get some consideration. Of course, I'm sure that may depend on the nature of the head ref... but I would hope that FIRST tells them in their training to at least be willing to review something.
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=428
While they say they aren't official rules, they can use them to make official calls.

Like I said, might depend on the head ref's nature as it has in the past, but I would hope Ref training smooths that out.

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

It may be something new but I have seen people approach the head ref with rules in hand and they were sent away.

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

I have never had a bad expierence with a head ref where they just sent away a student, so long as the student stays calm and collected a ref is usually willing to listen to anything, just don't question the call so much as ask them to explain it, and then try to argue it (maybe)

Re: Interesting Q/A's
 

I agree that head refs are great to talk with and explaining calls. If however someone comes up with rules in hand, that is another issue.