[Alex Cormier]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

Someone forgot to take into account the force if ramming a ball in a corner, and it getting popped.



I'm glad I found this thread.

Here's an example of something that has happened.


Team A traps team B's trackball against the corner consisting of the grated area making the Robocoach's wall & the Lexan players station wall on Team A's lane side.
Team B can not get to their trackball without crossing the Lane Divider in the legal direction, & going around Team A in reverse (illegal way) over the Lane Divider line.
To do this, Team B would get at least one 10pt. penalty.

There is a clear way to go past, so Team A is not technically blocking a lane / impeding traffic. (No Penalty)

Team A pins Team B's ball there for a good 30 seconds while Team B makes an effort to get it by staying around Team A and bumping Team A so they will move away from the ball.

That's not the end of the story though.

Upon Team A finally letting up on the pinning strategy, & pushing it forward over the Lane Divider line, Team B grabs the ball... It's now losing air from being pinned so tightly into the wall.

Team B tries to grab the ball but fails at hurdling the ball as it falls out of their grabber before it is at a height to go over the Overpass & is made inactive on the field.
Now, with a minute or so left in the match, a new ball is made ready at the sidelines, but never put into the arena, and the popped ball sits there just losing more & more air with a new ball nowhere to be found.

Team B loses the match.

Team A is assessed no penalties for any play in question.
(Popped ball, impeding traffic, pinning an opponent's trackball)

Upon waiting for a decision, & seeing the score with Team B losing by a small amount (which a good ball would have been able to compensate for), the match & plays are legally disputed with a Student from Team B & the Head Referee, but no penalties are given to Team A, nor is a rematch granted.


What do you think about pinning a ball now, and the legality of it?

Actually, let's do one of these. Based on the 2008 rules, You make the call!!

At first i thought you were talking about GTR and 1507's strategy once they were almost not operational. I would personally see it as a valid argument as a no penalty play as long as there is not anything with sharp edges on the robot that was pinning in the area that was in contact with the ball. If there is then, shouldn't they be in violation of the rules of harming the field elements? It is a unique strategy and will probably be used (if not already, you make it sound like it happened) sometime during week 6 and most likely down in Atlanta. I know how hard it is to stop even one amazing shooting robot. In many matches 1930 had a broken gripper and was being worked on as we were playing matches. I had my driver play some hard defense and played the ball more then the opposing robot. It proved to me there is defense in this game and can also be very legal. I even remember shutting down one of the top scoring robots via not letting even touch a ball. Also remember trying to stop 1126, but couldn't do it because of their speed and ability to grasp the ball so quickly. Maybe if I tried out the strategy you described here, we would have been more successful at stopping them.