[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Colin P

HOWEVER, after watching the video about 10 times to look at the upward force, I noticed you broke a much more obvious and important rule. Your alignment device, two pieces of metal, broke the plane of the tower base perimeter. I don't really feel like tearing through the rules right now, but to the best of my knowledge, no part of your robot can enter the base perimeter until the finale starts. This might be worth investigating before you head over to Troy.

Originally Posted by RMiller

I would be interested to know what rule it is you are referring to as none I know exist. The two closest are <G05> which is prematch and <G17> which only applies to the minibot crossing the tower cylinder, not the hostbost/robot.

I had the same mistaken thought as Collin until I re-read the rules recently. The confusion stems from the multiple revisions of the definition of DEPLOY. One of the earlier definitions was something along the lines of any part of your robot crossing the tower perimeter = deploying. Thus some of us have internalized a non-existent rule that no part of your robot may cross the tower perimeter until endgame.

Rereading the rules as they currently stand makes it clear that this is no longer the case and all the pre-alignment mechanisms are perfectly legal, provided the minibot doesn't cross the boundary before the endgame.