Re: Looking for a rule - No defense on robots without tubes
 

I think that rule was unfair because as I recall there were many matches were robots was getting pushed and shoved without them having possession of a tube and there was no yellow or red card given to them and no penalty points I attended that Great Lakes Regional and I truly think this is unfair

Re: Looking for a rule - No defense on robots without tubes
 

If it was to reduce the amount of defense played it should have been enforced Friday morning not in the middle of an regional on Saturday im pretty sure many teams (including ours) rankings would have been effected by the win-lose-tie outcome of the games that were played on Friday if the rule was changed or enforced then

Re: Looking for a rule - No defense on robots without tubes
 

This puts me in mind of what happened for a short time on Thursday at L.A. Seems that one of the refs used the original keeper rule and was making all the teams start with a keeper. Not only that, but said keeper had to be off the ground where it contacted a robot. I asked the refs about both (Hey, can you show me where it says this, cause I can't find it?), and they had already acted on the first question. The second question was a bit harder--the term was "in contact", so I said, "I'll let you define what 'in contact' is" and let it go at that.

If you think a rule is made up, ask the head ref (politely) to show you the rule. If he can't, but won't reverse the ruling, start moving up the chain of appeals.

Re: Looking for a rule - No defense on robots without tubes
 

I had a huge discussion with one of the refs at SoCal over the same issue. He threatened to toss me out and DQ our team because I told them to put the ringer off to the side and not touching the robot. I quoted the update and everything. I finally asked to speak to the head Ref who calmly spoke and listened to me. He went back and reread the section and agreed with the rule. He even appologized for the other ref. Another great experience of the co-operation and dedication of the volunteers in SoCal.

Re: Looking for a rule - No defense on robots without tubes
 

Well as many other teams at GLR team 68 was greatly shocked and upset about the outcome of the driver's meeting on Saturday morning.

During match 48 on Friday afternoon, team 68 went into a defensive mode after a portion of its arm broke. The defense was primarily against team 494 and team 326. Towards the end of the match one of these two robots were trying to score on spider leg #2 and team 68 pushed against both the spider leg and the robot attempting to score. After a period of time, team 68 ended up tipping itself over due to push on the spider leg. One of the referees signaled the head referee (Ron Webb) about us having a penalty against us because of this defensive play. After some discussion between the two, Ron instructed that there wasn't a penalty because everything was done in a legal manner. However the referee that originally called the penalty followed us out into the hallway, on the way back to the pits and instructed us that if we hadn't tipped we may have received a yellow card. We didn't argue this because we had not been official warned or penalized.

We were then back up in match 53 and hadn't had time to fix the problem with the arm due to early staging requirements (that is a completely different issue that needs to be addressed). Our strategy going into this match was to prevent team 66 from playing defense against our alliance and not allow them to return to their home zone. Team 66 is a 2 robot ramp bot with no way of handling tubes. While I will admit that we may have pushed team 66 a little more than what was needed; at no time was any pinning or ramming called. I do know that we pinned team 66 against the boundary of the field for a few seconds, but at no time was any counting done by the referees. Speaking with engineers on team 66 the following day, we did in fact damage their tank treads by pushing them side ways, causing their belts to stretch. There were no hard feelings between teams and they were just amazed that a 6 wheel drive could push that well against tank treads.

Then in match 58 our arm was back up and functional; however due to the lack of scoring that our alliance could do and hoping to show our defensive abilities against the first place team, in hopes of getting picked for elimination matches, we decided to play defense against team 1114. I do recall two situations where we pushed 1114 for a while trying to prevent them from moving on their own, but in the end they were able to get away and score. (Watch out in Waterloo Karthik!!! My drivers are having some required daily drive time till we leave!)

During the drivers meeting on Saturday I fed our chassis driver some questions to ask to clarify how defensive a team could be based on this new understanding of the rules. While we weren't necessarily happy, we left the drivers meeting trying to come up with some new strategies to play defense. Our strategy guy in the stands was not happy with the outcome of the meeting. He approached Ron sighting G35, in particular the first bullet. They discussed back and forth for at least 10 minutes. In the end Ron pointed to update 15, section 9, T06. This according to Ron was his way of being able to make the call of a robot needing to have a tube in order to play defense against a robot.

Our last qualifying match was Saturday morning (match 67). Our strategy for this match was to play defense, keeping in mind what Ron had said in the drivers meeting. We may have went with an offensive strategy in this match, but decided that we wanted to test the waters about the outcome of the drivers meeting in qualification matches instead of waiting till elimination matches and getting the how alliance DQed. While we didn't play as much defense as we had in previous matches, a fair amount was played and the result was we ended up winning the match. Ron came up to our drive team as soon as the match was over and told us that we did nothing wrong during the match and had played completely within the rules.

While I can say that team 68 wasn't happy with the "rule clarification" on Saturday morning, we were able to adjust strategies and play within them.

We also need to all remember that these people are volunteers. With out volunteers FIRST could not exist. While we might be able to point our fingers at Ron for being the head referee at GLR and making rulings that some disagree with, we need to remember that perhaps FIRST should do a better job instructing referees about how some rules should be enforced. What is the job of the FIRST Technical Advisors (FTA) at the regional events...?

Re: Looking for a rule - No defense on robots without tubes
 

For the sake of discussion, this is the text from the update:

Dave's already mentioned that the referees exceeded their authority in this case, so I hope that means that others have been instructed or otherwise informed that this sort of fabrication is unacceptable.

Re: Looking for a rule - No defense on robots without tubes
 

I think this just gets back to the question I asked in another tread about the yellow and red cards. This will make the FIRST yellow and red card system useless because refs will feel that they don't have the authority even though T06 lists examples and states that is not limited too just the examples given. I believe the yellow and red card system works great for IRI because there is one head ref (Andy). FIRST can never cover every situation that might come up during a regional making it necessary to give refs some freedom.

I also have to disagree that Dave has said that the referee exceeded his authority in this case. Dave commented on "The head referee should have been informed that he was "enforcing" a nonexistent rule." and Dave said "correct". Ron was questioned by my team about where he had come up with this ruling and in the end referred to rule T06. T06 does basically give the head ref this authority to make a judgment about the level of defense. Also G53 gives him final say for any particular regional without any worries. We can't blame a ref that reads the rules and follows them. You need to blame the people/organization writing them.

Re: Looking for a rule - No defense on robots without tubes
 

This case of rule enforcement at GLR sounds like the team of referees arrived at some conclusions that were meant to benefit teams, but the change should not have been made because it changed the parameters and expectations of the teams that were set at kickoff and through the build season and the first day of competition. I believe that smart defense should be allowed regardless of whether it is a team trying to pick up/score a ringer or lift/get lifted for bonus points.

I can remember one match at FLR where we were against the X-Cats and decided to play defense. I don't remember them having a tube all of the time, but our driver knew not to mindlessly ram their awesome scoring robot.

Re: Looking for a rule - No defense on robots without tubes
 

I think that the text of update 15 serves only as a reminder of situations that may result in a yellow card. It is not a rule, nor a new interpretation of a rule in any sense and conveys no additional or changed responsibilities or powers to the referees. It does not begin with the <xxx> nomenclature and is thus unenforceable, as far as I'm concerned. It, therefore, only explains that referees may look at violations of rules particularly relating to those circumstances when deciding to issue a yellow card. It is not carte blanche to reinterpret or make up rules.

In another thread (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&postcount=19), Dave explicitly said that the head referee exceeded his authority. Sorry for any confusion.

<T06> gives the authority to disseminate yellow cards for EGREGIOUS robot or team member actions. The definition of EGREGIOUS (though not provided by FIRST, despite its capitalization in the manual) suggests that actions that are not specifically disallowed by the rules are not conspicuously offensive or in bad taste. Certainly, precedent from past seasons and, more importantly, the prior week's events suggests that nothing about defending a ringer-less robot is inappropriate. How is that a single ref. made this interpretation to the exclusion of all others? They're certainly not given a rule book and left on their own to decide what the words inside mean, after all -- that's what Aiden is for.