Quote:
Originally Posted by rich2202
In theory, it roughly balances out in the end.
It is less about you, and more about the non-compliant team. Teams spend a lot of effort and money to get to a competition. DQ'ing them and not allowing them to compete at all would totally ruin their season. RI's jump through a lot of hoops to help get non-compliant teams onto the field. Most solutions require disabling the non-compliant system. Unfortunately, non-compliant chassis is not an easy fix.
Letting non-compliant teams compete, but not advance, at least lets the team get on the field for their 6-8 matches. That's about as far as 2/3rds of the teams make it anyway.
Letting them on the field is Gracious Professionalism. Complaining that they may have a marginal affect on your rankings is not.
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Getting them onto the field in a legal configuration is Gracious Professionalism. Back in 2013, there were two teams at each of the events I volunteered at that built their robots to the previous year's dimensions. Inspectors and other teams jumped in to help them cut 10" off the front of their robots and rework all of their mechanisms. All 4 of those teams made it to their first match. They may not of performed as well as their robot did before surgery, but they still got to play the game, they still got to work towards improvements and they were still eligible for alliance selection (I couldn't tell you how any of those teams ranked or if they made it to Saturday afternoon, unfortunately). And, I would hazard to say, everyone on those teams learned an important lesson in reading through all of the requirements for a project. That, right there, is the challenge for the inspectors and every team - working towards getting everyone at your event compliant with the rules so they can make their first match with a legal robot.
I don't think it's a bad thing to worry about how a team with an illegal robot will affect rankings. It doesn't all balance out in the end, as the qualifying rounds aren't nearly complete enough for such a thing to have no affect. As we've seen, a lucky schedule can propel a team to being an alliance captain, while an unlucky schedule can drop you way down in the rankings. Looking at the big picture, which is more gracious, allowing 1 team to compete with an illegal robot, or allowing the other 59 teams (at a 60 team regional) to compete on a level playing field?