[EStokely]

Wow.

Nice light topic for the afternoon.

I guess we learn from this and try to make the appropriate changes for next year. There was a time that a team could anonymously "turn in" another team for re inspection. In an effort to prevent this very problem.

But as you stated there are no mechanisms to deal with the scenario you presented. And I would guess most of us would feel that there should be a way for this type of behavior to be addressed. All you could do was make suggestions. Obviously GP was not being considered by the team as presented here.

I guess I am most concerned with a robot being allowed to compete that didn't pass inspection. Some of this problem could have been addressed if they had not been allowed on the field until they initially met inspection.

So in an effort to turn this into a positive allow me to make a few suggestions for next year, or even future matches this year.
1) No robot competes unless it is within the rules.
2) Weigh before each match, or immediately after each match, at the field (I know logistically this could be a problem but of the size/weight concerns here weight is the bigger problem I suspect)
3) Do random inspections during Friday and sat
4) Have published penalties for breaking the rules. A robot found to be over weight should lose the matches they competed in, even if its retroactive (IMHO) As to which matches I think a case could be made for any "Suspected matches" i.e. any matches between weigh ins.
Harsh? yep. but it is the teams responsibility to keep their weight in spec. If you alter the machine you need to reweigh. That's pretty straight forward.

If these problems are not addressed then what are rules in the future worth? Are they guidelines or are they rules?