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Unread 22-02-2006, 00:21
Ethulin Ethulin is offline
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Re: Off Side Penalty?

Quote:
Originally Posted by AmyPrib
Well, some don't agree that this is a perfectly legal strategy of plan as outlined by the rules. Perhaps it's time for Q/A to specifically address this actual case.

This is not really a defensive play, persay. As always stated, nobody says Defense is un-GP. The perceived intent behind this strategy is to make your opponents score go to 0, while you sit back and watch, maybe? The rules basically tell you that playing defense on a would-be backbot does you absolutely no good. If one wants to think of this as a legit plan, ok. But I guess I don't understand the advantage of wasting all your time pushing a dead robot, rather than scoring offensively with your partners. To each his own.

If a robot is dead, it's likely that the dead bot could be damanged by the pushing, shoving, beating by the opponent to get it moved on the other side of the line. That is not acceptable and likely will be penalized for damage. I would hope they'd give up if it doesn't budge.

The question is cause of infraction. In G26, if the opponent is preventing you from becoming a backbot, the backbot doesnt' get penalized because they are not causing their own inability to get behind the line. Now if a dead bot is sitting there, they are fine. If the opponent pushes them back to the other side, the opponent caused the infraction, not the deadbot themselves. The alliance did not cause themselves to violate the rule, so if you interpret the rule that way, then no penalty.

Would seem the same logic that applies in the moving case would apply in the dead case. Therefore, the deadbot did not cause his situation, therefore by implication would not be penalized.

Why would they penalize a dead robot who was perfectly fine as a dead backbot minding his own business when they don't penalize a robot that is actually moving to become a backbot but is prevented by the opponent? This logic implies that it does not good for the opponent to try and screw up your ability to get in backbot position.

I will ask Q/A and get it answered. Good debate though.
Excellently articulated response, rep points coming your way. It seems people stretch the rules into a "GP" form a lot in FIRST, something will notice does not happen in other sports. If you want rules to be read that way I suggest you (GDC) write them that way. As a relatively high level soccer referee we subscribe to the philosophy that the simplest interpretation of a rule is the correct one. In soccer the rules are revised if we want to mean something else, we don't make up long winded explanations te justify them. I understand FIRST is different, but if we want it to be a "real" sport we should play by our own rules. The def. of prevent is: "To keep (someone) from doing something; impede". Impede is defined as " To retard or obstruct the progress of". The fatal flaw in your logic is that you say they "caused the penalty". You are 100% correct to say that they put the bot in a situation that allows the bot to incur a penalty, but think of it this way; if you pushed a live bot over the line and backed off and that bot's drivers decided to take their hands off the controls and let it sit there thould it incure the penalty? The other team DID put the bot in the illegal position. The only difference is that the team has the ability to get out of it. The rules do not reference this ability, therefore a penalty should be assessed in both situations.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon K.
At the Winter War Zone scrimmage(the FIRST "testing" ground(as far as I know, it is the first place that FIRST actually sees the game in play by a real robot. Anyone can feel free to correct me via p.m. if that assumption is false.)) the head ref moved a dead bot over to the other side after calling about 30 seconds worth of penalties on the dead bot's alliance.
Jon, I almost really did smile when I read this. Did anyone ask how under the rules he came to the conclusion that this is the right thing to do? If an alliance is too dense to figure out they just got 30 penalty points against them so they should pull one of their bots back then they deserve the next 10. It seems the 30 second mark is so arbitrary. Either you count it or you don't.
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Last edited by Ethulin : 22-02-2006 at 00:30.