[interpretTHIS]

Originally Posted by gp2013

Yet in North Bay, we were the offensive robot and the defensive robot was flipped after repeated hits on us and we received a red card whilst trying to drive across the court to cross the defences back to the neutral zone. Therefore, inconsistent.

Without understanding the specifics of that match and solely based on your description, I might agree that this particular instance is, in fact, inconsistent.

However, in your description, you describe the defensive robot as "repeatedly hitting" the offensive robot while the offensive robot was trying to go from the courtyard over the defenses. This would lead me to believe that perhaps either

a) G43 should have been called on the defensive robot if the contact was in the Outer Works
or
b) The defensive robot flipped themselves by engaging in a hit on the offensive robot, which certainly should not have invoked G24.

If a robot has a Boulder and is moving toward their opponent's Tower, their objective and strategy is clear. If a robot does not have a boulder, the intention become muddier, and a referee needs to decide who the "offensive" robot is in a particular scenario, as your position on the field doesn't solely dictate what your intended strategy is. Many factors need to be combined to help a referee determine if the team's strategy wound up in the incapacitation of another robot. Which leads me to my final point:

It's difficult to decipher consistency without match reference, video, and frame of mindset of the referees.

Originally Posted by Chris is me

This isn't what the words of the rule say - this is an asinine interpretation of them. The rule is black and white - strategies aimed at the... inhibition... by tipping - the strategy has to be to cause a tip. That's what the word "by" is for in the rule. It is not "if tipping occurs when the strategy is defense" - the strategy has to be the illegal action. It's plainly clear from the wording of the rule, that the entire sentence is one clause and not two, that it is not "if you execute strategy, and then this happens, it's a red card".

First, let's make sure we cite the rule correctly:

Originally Posted by G24

Strategies aimed at the destruction or inhibition of ROBOTS via attachment, damage, tipping,
entanglements, or deliberately putting a BOULDER on an opponent’s ROBOT are not allowed.

(Emphasis mine, contrasting the word "by" in your statement)

By your interpretation of the rule, only teams that make their strategy of "tipping" known should be penalized under G24.

The penalty isn't for having a strategy of "tipping someone's robot over", the penalty is for having a strategy that inhibits robots, via one of the listed methods. The intention of the drivers may NOT have been to tip the robot, but the intention WAS to inhibit the robot (definition of playing defense), which was employed in such a way that resulted in tipping, which then becomes the potential violation point of G24. This is where the referee needs to make a determination about the strategy, for example:

• Was the tipping itself intentional?
• Was there a shoving match in which one of the robots became unstable and the defender didn't back down?
• Did the offending team have understanding of the potential consequences of their actions (a previous similar-type hit resulted in instability of the offense robot)