[George A.]

I really don't think the penalties are all that unfair. I mean they're simple enough to follow. Either have one of your robots behind the line when it's supposed to or get penalized. Don't go in farther than 3" or get penalized.

One easy way of avoiding the Incursion DQ? Make it so your ball deployment system CAN'T fit in the corral. If the deployment system is so ridiculously huge that it can't fit in then there's no way to get penalized. IMO if your deployment system has the risk that it could get pushed in at a certain angle then you're playing with fire and you're going to get burned.

It's foolish for anyone to think that their opponents will just sit idly by and let their opponents score. They're going to play defense, and as such they might end up pushing their opponent into the corner corral. The action is at the opposite end of the field from the drivers so they can't tell.

And here's a sob story for you...

MY team (11) were in the final match in the 2001 Championships on Galileo field before allaince pairing. We were in 6th place and barring any catastrophe's it looked like we were going to elims. The first robot went over the teeter-totter bridge...and the bridge popped off the fulcum making it immovable, as such we couldn't score, so we shut the clock and took the points we could. The end result we get a horrible score, our rank gets dropped from 6th to ninth. We miss 8th place by .5 points, and we don't get picked. When we talked to the ref about a redo since the field broke, they said that it wasn't their fault as it was an "Act of God' . Granted, we didn't like the ruling but we lived with it, and next year we made sure that our robot would be able to adapt to field conditions.

Sorry for the ramble, but the rules are the rules, if your risking coming close to incursion...find another way to score or live with the penalities that you might acrue.