[Alex Pelan]

I agree -there does need to be penalty reform. In the majority of qualifiers, a penalty means a loss for an alliance. I think that the 30 point loading penalties are too severe in comparison to the amount of scoring that is going on.I see the reasons for these rules, and that is protect the humans involved in loading tetras either on the robot itself or into the loading zone. At the same time, a lot of these penalties happen by accident, or with no malicious harm meant.

An example of this is today at BAE, Buzz fell over, and while righting themselves, touched a robot in the loading zone. There was not even an attempt to block here, nor did Buzz pose any threat to the human, as their arm was a couple of inches off the ground.

Perhaps penalties should be more like the criminal justice system in the US (minus the bureaucracy). First time offenders can get off with a warning or small penalty, depending on the nature of the incident, while second time offenders get a larger penalty. Third time offenders get disabled. Just bouncing some ideas off here, and they probably won't be necessary as teams learn about these penalties quickly...it's just that so many of these calls are close.