[Andrew Schreiber]

My personal biggest issue wasnt our team being penalized for breaking the rules. It was our alliance being penalized when one member broke the rules. We lost matches not because we broke the rules but because our alliance members decided not to follow them. These were matches we had won but then taken away because of penalties, G22's which seemed like they were more accidents than intentional. No one gained anything from the breaking of the plane so why was it a penalty? More importantly, why did it decide the outcomes of the matches? Say I am bitter about it if you want, I probably am. All I am saying is I am a little mad that our season was so influenced by penalties on other teams.

Solutions, I cant complain without offering some solutions. One option would be to record win/loss by team. Each team gets their alliance's score - any penalties THEY committed. This way the teams that break the rules are punished but their alliances arent. Obviously in the elims this might have to change but frankly the way penalties work now is fine for elims. If you picked them you WANTED to work with them. Option 2, time delay at the beginning. Each robot accumulates x number of seconds for penalties. These are cumulative and assessed at the start of each match. Option 3, make penalty points into a ranking category. The teams with the least penalties seed higher. Probably wont make HUGE difference but if you pair it with qualifying points (qp-penalties) you might encourage teams to take less penalties when they realize it will really mess with their score.

Just some thoughts which are coming to me at this really late hour.