Eliminating Penalties would be nearly impossible in most FRC games. Most years there aren't too many, just the normal ones like ramming, pinning and tipping. Those are going to be required in any game so having a ten point penalty for those is understandable.
The Game specific ones are the ones that usually will decide matches. In '05 there was the loading zone violation, '06 had the corner goal incursion penalty, '07 there was the Chute/Wall penalty, and this year we had the hurdling interference and line crossing violations. IMO after driving or operating or coaching in all of these games except '05, I found that the basic penalties will rarely be broken after a teams first few matches and when they are they're broken on purpose or the team knows that they've broken it. Most of the Game specific ones are broken throughout the season though. Especially this year because of how tight the field gets and how fast the robots are.
I like the Idea by the Original Poster of having a time penalty. I think it would have been interesting to see brief disables during matches for certain penalties. Perhaps G22 could've been done that way this year if the system would've allowed for it. (I'm not sure if you can disable and then re-enable a robot in the same match with the current field). For example, my team crosses the lane divider backwards and we get disabled or frozen for 5 seconds. It'll still have a decent affect on scores because all of us know what can happen in 5 seconds. Who knows 5 seconds could be the that last second ramp, those 3 final poof balls, one more tetra or that final hurdle. -It's just a thought though
