[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

I was unclear. The "tech foul" we received in Pittsburgh was not really the target of my "battlebots" implication. It was, however, the result of careless gameplay on behalf of an aggressor where a robot positioned their claw in a hazardous manner when playing defense. To their credit, the team that received the benefit of this penalty apologized to people in our pit, saying they realized they were in the wrong. I hope they learn to translate that remorse into improved gameplay on the field.

To my discredit, I blew up verrrrrrry overtly in the pit over this whole situation, to the point I felt it necessary to leave the venue for an extended period, including Friday closing ceremonies. As I've said elsewhere, this game and my personality are a "toxic combination." The rest of the team handled the situation in a much better manner than I did.

The "battlebots" I was referring to actually occurred in Wisconsin, and went unpenalized all weekend (at least the "ripping wires", etc. stuff that happened to us in multiple matches on Saturday).

Ah, okay, that makes a lot more sense.

I don't see anything in that video that is even close to what ought to be a foul - clearly, your bot did absolutely nothing wrong, and the other bot caused no damage except to themselves and did nothing malicious so much as careless (though, to their credit, they weren't that far outside of their frame perimeter when the entanglement happened). That you got called for a tech foul there is absurd.

It seems this sort of stuff varies a lot by regional - I was very content with the reffing at Greater DC. We played stiff, aggressive (but not damaging or violent) defense for the vast majority of the competition and had no problems with bad calls.