[Petey]

Originally Posted by Bduggan04

Touching the tetras isn't a penalty, instead it violate the basic definition of a scored tetra. The situation you describe sounds like dumb luck, not an excessive penalty.

You're right. I've edited my post. It wasn't a penalty, but it was a situation in which a nonsensical rule was in place.

My other observation is that none of the penalties must be violated to accomplish any part of the game as you implied. They are all easily avoidable with skilled drivers and decent strategies. If this means a shift to an all offense game as some have implied, penalties will become less significant because the scores will certainly increase. I don't see this shift in gameplay. All offense suggests that teams will have the full time period to score freely, and this was not the case in nearly every match.

Scores do not increase. I would venture a guess that the average score would be somewhere between 25 and 35 points. Highest I saw was 79 to something--lowest I saw was 3 to 0.

The only result that can come from penalties is better drivers and robots from good teams and low scores from reckless teams. They will separate the teams with the most finese from the rest of teams. The increase in scores in the reginals to come (there always is an increase) will render penalties less decisive than they are now.

I don't agree with your assessment, because it assumes that A) the penalties will be assessed judiciously and B) all the penalties described in the manual are fair and meaningful. I'm not sure if either A nor B is true.

Another thought that comes to mind is that if you know a team has recieved a massive penalty, let them score. There's no need to cap on their goals if you know you have a 30 point advantage over them.

But you don't know, because the assessment of penalties is so arbitrary, there are different weights to each penalty, it's impossible to see the penalty flags from the drivers station, and, overall, your point doesn't make sense because you could be assessed with a similar penalty and that would bring your score down. So that's not valid at all.

Originally Posted by JosephM

That's the irony at VCU Andy, I saw many un-gracious teams do very bad things to robots, and not get penalized, yet other teams who just tap a robot get 30 points taken off. I understand that a team who threatens the safety of another team member should get a huge penalty, but this has not happened as many times as huge penalties have been given out.

Agreed.

--Petey