[AmyPrib]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I dont understand why you feel this way? do you play any sports in school? do you take gym class?

First of all, I'm an engineer, not a high school student who takes gym class. Second, yes, I played many sports while in school but I don't feel I have to compare this robotics organization to any sport.

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

if you dont get between a bot and its goal and it gets into scoring position, then you lost your chance - its too late - why do you think its now ok to push it over and 'take it out' for the rest of the match?

Where on earth do I say in my post that I think it's ok to push a robot over and "take it out" for the rest of the match? Because nowhere does it even imply that!

Why can't another robot push us out of the way? You can't honestly expect the only defense of an opponent to be physically sitting in front of my goal. If that's the case, then you would disallow robots on the platform to stick an arm thru the goal in order to prevent my 2x? Technically they're not "in between me and my goal". I think it's ridiculous to say you shouldn't be able to push someone from the side, or front, or back, or other side.
I think that if I built a robot that is top heavy or know that there's even the slightest possibility of tipping if someone pushes on me, I should be expecting it.

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

cause if a player is in 'scoring postion' then they have already played the game better than you.

No they haven't. Why can't it mean that I have a good offensive robot that is actually playing the game elsewhere, instead of parking itself in front of a goal all day long waiting for you to come along, just so I can "be in between you and the goal". That's silly.

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

and the rules state that 'any strategy aimed solely towards tipping... is not allowed'. But Ive seen match after match where this happened, so I dont see how anyone can say, we only intended to push them sideways, we expected there wheels to skid sideways and the bot to NOT fall over, but for some reason it fell over..

Well by the same token, how in the heck can you say they "intended" to tip you over? Yes, the rule states any strategy aimed soley towards tipping. Pushing is a strategy aimed soley at tipping a robot? Hasn't your team ever pushed another robot? Was your intention to tip them over? Doubt it.
If you look at the matches of 45 and 71, like I previously used as examples, you can see that they've gotten pushed around from their sides without tipping over. So I don't see the harm in that, why should it be disallowed? While I can't speak for 71, 45 built their robot to have the least liklihood of tipping. So yes - Wheels can in fact skid sideways without causing a robot to tip over. It's pretty simple. I would think you'd look at your robot during design and say hmm.. if someone plays defense on me, how easily will I tip? Or, where will I get damaged and how can I improve that?

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I think after this year you are going to see more and more teams who tried to build machines with complex articulated arms for capping, or ball collectors simply come back next year with tanks, armored vehicles that savage anything on the field, cause they tried to play the game to score points this year and ended up watching match after match with their bots knocked flat, and no penalites called.

Eh, I don't think so. I guess you could look at that way if you're negative. But most teams that I saw had an offensive mechanism to help them score points and to play their own offense. If they happen to go against a much better offensive robot, then of course they need some sort of defense. Unless FIRST is invaded with dirty game-playing people, which I hope doesn't happen, then we shouldn't have to worry about the majority of people turning into pure defense robots like you predict. If you watch a lot of matches, I think you'd see that the most effective robot was one that could play great offense, but knew how to avoid/defeat the defense and could play it's own if need be. So I wouldn't expect everything to take a 180 just because some good defense won the Championships.

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

seriously, why bother to build an arm to place the 2X ball if you know you will be toppled over and over if you make it to the elim rounds? Why build a ball collector if someone can fly across the field at full speed and smash your rollers? why build a ball capture machine if someone can stuff their sky hook or claw into it and pull you over

Good point. Why would anyone bother to build a non-robust robot that can be easily toppled, or easily smashed, or easily pulled around the field? You didn't make any point there. I mean, are you saying that it's not possible to build an arm for a 2x that won't get you tipped? Is it impossible to protect your rollers from getting smashed? Is it impossible to build a drivetrain that prevents you from being pulled around like that? If you said yes to any of those, you haven't see this years robots.

Maybe there weren't many DQ's or calls on certain rules, but MAYBE it's because the refs deemed it "not intentional, not malicious" and within the rules!!! The refs do what they can according to the rules. There's other debates going on about that, how to improve the rules to satisfy more people, but the bottom line is, creating all these conditional defense rules may not be the answer, and certainly not basing them all on what various sports do.
Sure there are some similarities, but I guess I just don't believe you can apply most sports rules that deal with Humans to robots. For one thing, Humans can control their physical actions better than they can control a robots actions. If a human goes running into another human with full body contact, my feeling is that it's easier to call that as an intentional body slam, then you could call a robot doing something similar. I have a pretty good idea that a person will fall over when I run into them with my whole body, especially in plane sight. I don't have a pretty good idea if someone's robot is gonna fall over if I hit them on one side versus a different side, and that's even assuming full view. Maybe I don't have a full view now, how the heck can you penalize me for intentional tipping when I can't see through 2 full goals, pvc, other robots, and a platform? I can't even see which direction a robot is facing. So now are you going to say that I just shouldn't be on the opponent's side at all if I don't have a good view of them? And should I just not shoot balls into the goal so that I can be able to view them?

Common sense comes into play for everyone when judging these conditions. You know darn well when you do something maliciously intentionally, so don't do it. The actions that I've seen debated already don't seem to have been intentional. The only people that know for sure are those people.

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

If thats the way the game is played now in FIRST, why bother trying to cap or score points?

It seems so cynical and childish to basically say "why should I bother building a robot at all, that can play offensive aspects of the game, if someone can play defense on me".

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

all those teams who lost out after being knocked over, or who could not continue to play due to severe damage - what have they learned this year?

How 'bout - lower the center of gravity, don't build top heavy or too tall without precautions, protect your robot features, learn to fix it..... They may have learned those things. Isn't this whole organization partially about learning and improving?