Possession and Herding
 

Hi Everyone -

Our team has been thinking about ways to make it explicitly clear that we are not possessing multiple balls when we are trying to herd multiple balls. Getting a penalty in this game, especially with the new ranking system, could be dangerous for an alliance's teams and their ranking points. I know there are other threads that talk about the difference between herding and possessing. Here, I wanted to hear everyone's opinion on how your team plans to make it clear to the referees that they are not possessing multiple balls while actually trying to herd (assuming you have a ball possessing mechanism).

Thanks.

Re: Possession and Herding
 

Not official from a team, but the simplest way would be to suddenly stop briefly a time or two. Yeah, you might lose a ball when you resumed herding, but you'd lose the equivalent of one by getting a penalty.

Re: Possession and Herding
 

We're planning to use the roller system, common to many of this year's designs, and just reverse it giving us an almost repeling affect on the balls, it still needs to be fully tested, but the hope is we'll be able to hord the balls in a corner shooting them one by one.

Re: Possession and Herding
 

We were thinking of doing the same. Our co-pilot would be a big aid to make sure we weren't in violation, and if for a moment we were inadvertently possessing more than one ball, he/she would alert the driver to 'back off' and rectify the situation, either by spinning or going in reverse, etc. True, we could lose the 'original possessed ball', but we're counting on the referees to notice the "another ball wanted to be possessed by us, but we tried to turn away" maneuver and give us the benefit of the incidental situation.

Re: Possession and Herding
 

Our plan is to make our "ball magnet" roller type possession mechanism just narrow enough that it can only possess one ball.

Re: Possession and Herding
 

We are going with the plan of keeping it narrow as well. Our frame opening and roller width are both 15" so two balls will not fit side-by-side.

Re: Possession and Herding
 

This is what ours will be as well. We will be able to push more balls, but the others will not be able to be controlled.