[Don Wright]

This is a very interesting subject. If FIRST does go down this path (I hope it doesn't...see later in my post), then I suggest looking at professional sports like otheres here have mentioned.

Rules in these sports cover all aspects of what seems to be bothering people here. But you have to pick and choose rules from which sports for what. For example, picks (where your teammate blocks your opponent from following you) are allowed in basketball, but not in football. You could have the charging rule from hockey. Maybe impliment the 3 second rule from basketball where an offensive robot is only allowed in certain areas for 3 seconds. No holding...that's a pretty standard rule in all sports. Tripping? That's kind've like flipping in the robot world. Maybe FIRST can supply shock sensors (like those used in airbags on cars) and we place these on our robot and if another robot hits us and it causes the shock sensor to go off, a big light goes on or something and the attacking robot is assessed an "aggressive play" penalty.

But, I thought FIRST didn't want to be like professional sports.

What I would really like is for the FIRST community to work on this ourselves and not need all these rules stating every little thing. This is a rough game. When you are trying to score through another robot, you better expect they are going to fight back. And if you want to stop another team from scoring, expect the same. If your robot can't handle it, then you better figure out another way to score. That was the beauty of this game. The stationary goal being blocked all the time? Work on a strategy to get the mobile goal into play. Or go hang...

I know most of this is starting from the agressive play from 469 and 494...both great teams which I admire greatly. Both had awesome robots, but really the only way I could see 469 get defeated was by playing very strong defence. So, that is what 494 had to do...and they did a great job. There was nothing wrong. They played 469 EXTREMELY hard and aggressive and guess what...469's robot didn't break. It was robust. Very robust.

Our robot this year worked fairly well, but it broke very easily upon contact with others. And I know if we went to hang and another robot wanted to stop us, they could easily move us... So, we are using the experience and observations from the Championship to try and design and build something that won't have those issues next year. Some strong, easily repairable, and robust. Will it look as pretty as ours did this year...probably not. Will it have all the fancy gadgets and stuff to do whatever we need to do...probably...but they will be basic, robust things.

So, I think these gaming rules shouldn't be changed at all because it will always come down to the refs judgement, which differs from ref to ref, Regional to Regional, and at the Championship. And that's not really fair to any of us. It's not their fault and they do a great job, but it comes down to peoples perceptions of things and that is very hard to qualify. I do like the idea of a video or something on the FIRST site explaining where each rule comes from so we all understand what they are trying to accomplish with each particular rule.

Besides, there are other material rules that should be reworked instead.