[DougHogg]

Originally posted by Bill Gold
Don't think that if one of your opponents was somehow disabled or a no show you wouldn't be extatic at the chance your team could rack up tons of points.

I see what you are saying. However I personally wouldn't be ecstatic about that. Imagine that through some massive fluke, an opponent no shows in every match, so your team winds up the winner and gets a trophy. Would you feel great? I doubt it. I certainly wouldn't because I would know that our team didn't really do anything to earn it. When I go to a FIRST competition, among other things such teaching our students to use their knowledge, meeting friends and admiring each others robots, I go to compete, and that means that I need opponents. I just want opponents that will abide by the rules, so its fair and honorable. Some tipping is going to occur, but deliberate tipping is against the rules. Also I don't think it is unreasonable to hope that teams will indicate that they aren't deliberately tipping other robots, by showing some concern. (True, we won't die if they don't.)

Originally posted by Bill Gold
Getting back to robots tipping and being flipped... It's either a design flaw on your partner's part (high CG) or something else which could have been avoided.

Well I agree with you. Most of the time, a team whose robot tips should just take responsibility for the fact that it happened, due to design, driving, etc. But sometimes, another team has a robot flipping cow catcher or they just went too far by ramming a robot really hard that would obviously tip because of being off balance, and then I would say something about it, because that is part of being responsible also: communicating when something is out of line.

Yes, you are right, FIRST is not in a life and death struggle, but we are trying to change the world. That's pretty important, and the game is helping us do that. So I guess the game matters to that extent.

Anyway, I like this game. I don't see anything wrong with wanting to keep it friendly.