[jts]

I do believe that the penalties are too high, but I understand why they are so high. Our robot had an arm that could reach out 10 ft, and could seriously injure human players. However, that brings me to my next point. If FIRST truly wanted to protect us from the robots on the field, why do they have the human loading station in the first place? Putting a 30 pt penalty on an action isn't very helpful if someone were to get hurt.

I also believe that if a penalty has the ability to drastically change the results of a match, then that aspect of the match should be reconsidered. Our alliance outscored our opponents by 26 points, but an alliance partner bumped the opposing side in the human loading zone and we lost. So, for two reasons I dislike the 30 point penalty: it does not really protect the human player and it drastically alters the outcome of many matches.