How does descoring work?
 

I must not be understanding this correctly... can someone help shed some light?
How do you ever get your ball down from the overpass overlooking your opponent's finish line? You can't even reach the overpass when you're in the opponent's home stretch, and because the edge of the overpass is aligned with the finish line, you aren't allowed to reach to the overpass once you're out of the home stretch. Do you just have to hope that your opponents don't wait until the end to knock your ball down? In the end game, can you not score on your opponent's side? Can you not descore on your opponent's side?

Re: How does descoring work?
 

Seems you drive past the home stretch, turn around, and either grab it or knock it off from there. Sucks...

edit: thinking. I'll prob come back to this thread.

Re: How does descoring work?
 

Based on <G22>, I'm pretty sure that that's not a legal alternative.

Re: How does descoring work?
 

You could knock the ball down with a blast of air. If your robot is six feet tall, it's only six inches to the overpass.

Re: How does descoring work?
 

You can go in any direction in a given quadrant, you just can't cross the lines going the wrong direction. Otherwise if a ball rolled into a corner, you're in extremely hot water.

edit: And you can be on the finish line in the wrong direction, just not CROSS it, from how <G22> reads to me.

Re: How does descoring work?
 

The ball weighs about 10 lbs, so a blast of air from six inches away is going to be tough.

I assume the ball is nested in the bridge, therefore the bottom might be below the 6' limit. This might allow you to punch the ball off. Thoughts?

Re: How does descoring work?
 

So you could go past the overpass, then turn around and knock the ball off...

Besides, G22 says "by moving", not by turning.

<G22> Direction Of Traffic – ROBOTS must proceed around the TRACK in a counter-clockwise direction. Once a ROBOT has CROSSED a LANE MARKER or FINISH LINE, it shall not break the plane of the line by moving in the clockwise direction. A PENALTY will be assigned for each infraction.

Re: How does descoring work?
 

I agree w/ the ball hanging idea, any way to calculate how low it hangs?

Re: How does descoring work?
 

Getting my math out, brb.

But to jgannon, you can turn around and knock it down.
7.2 Definition of crossing

You're considered crossing when ALL PARTS have crossed the line. GO past, turn around, don't fully cross the line, you're fine and dandy.

Re: How does descoring work?
 

No! What you describe would not be considered crossing, but it would certainly be breaking the plane. Remember, "Once a ROBOT has CROSSED a LANE MARKER or FINISH LINE, it shall not break the plane of the line by moving in the clockwise direction." Any motion that caused you to break the plane of that line from there would have to be clockwise in nature.

Re: How does descoring work?
 

The key word here is "moving." Wouldn't pivoting be allowed? You could at lest pivot counter-clockwise if that is where the problem lies.

Re: How does descoring work?
 

We measured about 70 inches from the bottom of the ball the floor, at the kickoff.

Re: How does descoring work?
 

Is that measurement, or were you able to calculate that? If it was calculation, I would really like to know how for future reference.

Re: How does descoring work?
 

Hope you're not getting too worked up, just thinking in a lot of directions and not spent a lot of time arond the rules. You're definitely right there. We might be limited to the bottom of the ball, going to figure out how low it hangs in a second.

Another thought though -- what if they intended for it to be a penalized process? If you want to get your second ball into play, you have to gamble the points?

Re: How does descoring work?
 

If so, the human demonstration didn't show it.