[AmyPrib]

Originally Posted by Natchez

Because many teams met the design requirement and it simply is not fair to change the requirements after ship.

Only a detriment to those who met the design requirement ... not for those who ignored the requirement knowing that FIRST could be "convinced" to change the rules which they already have on the human player side from "feedback".

Ok. I agree. I don't think teams simply "ignored" the requirements, and I would hope people didn't think they could "convince" FIRST to change their minds about things.. Maybe some did, who knows. I think a lot of people were legitimately confused as to the intent of the rule and the interpretation of the rule. Yes - the questions and clarifications should have been asked earlier. Yes - we should have gotten clear and unchanging answers earlier. I agree - it wouldn't be fair to those who understood the rule and designed to it.

One thing I will be interested to see, is how many penalties (if many) get thrown for robots that were actually touching the zone, just barely, but the refs don't see it and therefore penalize them. There may be some butting heads of the "being obvious" and "touching the zone". Hopefully teams can do both to make it easy-to-see for themselves and the refs. I'm thinking to avoid interference 30pt penalties, if an opponent robot is anywhere near the loading zone, stay away, because you may not be able to tell if they're "just barely in" the zone.
We shall see how it all plays out during matches and hopefully it proves not to be a huge issue afterall.