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Originally Posted by Koko Ed
Things that did not go so well this year were..
- The penalties. The 30 point penalty is perhaps a bit excessive considering it's harder to score this year.
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I agree with Ed on most of his points, but I disagree with this one, even though penalties bit our alliance HARD twice in playoffs (Pittsburgh Regional and Galileo Division).
For the past 3 seasons, I have witnessed teams building Battle Bots to play defense. It didn't matter what you broke on the opposing robot, what only mattered was how hard you could hammer them. I think that FIRST wanted to get back to a more elegant method of playing the game, and these penalties became a serious punishing stick.
I commend FIRST for not reversing their decision on enforcing the penalties.
We veteran teams need to emphasize with the newer ones that "playing the game cleanly" is the proper method of winning. Do we suffer for these infractions, of course, but rather than complain to FIRST about it, we need to encourage our allies and competitors to eliminate the actions that cause these penalties.
In an alliance, you win as one, you lose as one, and you commit penalties as one. Any other viewpoint indicates that three individual robots may have played the game, but an alliance truly did not exist.