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Originally Posted by purduephotog
1) If a human player illegally retrieves an empty cell from the playing field by breaking the plane (-10 points) why is the cell not confiscated? Said player can still exchange the cell for a super cell- and thus is rewarded by +5 points should the cell be scored.
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I think this was answered above, but the rules are designed that sometimes there are "loopholes" or choices you can make in order to benefit your alliance. Many teams may not agree that taking a penalty to go up a few points is really "GP", but if the rules dont disallow it, it is allowed. In this case, if your human player is a really good thrower, it might be worth the 10 point penalty to grab something just outside your box.
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Originally Posted by purduephotog
2) If a robot is DQ'd from a match at the conclusion for an illegal starting position or starting outside of the bounds, why are the points that the team scored not subtracted? (I understand the logistics of this one).
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DQ and disable are two completely different things. Just because a student got excited and forgot to look at the tape on the floor, it shouldnt cost the entire alliance the points in all cases. Sometimes it does, but the rules are the rules, and they are judged a certain way.
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Originally Posted by purduephotog
3) We watched a field reset because all 6 teams started throwing balls into the court at '3-2-1- GO' instead of the tone. No penalties were assessed (should have been -20 or -30 per side). Earlier in the day we watched 3 teams pick up 10 point penalties for getting a ball into the court at '3-2-1-GO'. Perhaps, in the future, this should be set up similar to a drag race- No announcer, just a tone.
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If this is the match I am remembering, this is not actually the case. The match was replayed because the field failed at 1 second remaining, and the referees and scorers were waiting to hear the tone and didnt see the clock, so they couldnt tell when the clock stopped to tell which of the human player balls should/should not have counted. There was no fair way to just guess at it, so they had to replay it. If its not the same match, again the refs are human, what you observed may not be what they observed and they do the best they can. We have all had things "missed", or called differently than we would have. Its just a game at the end of the day.
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Originally Posted by purduephotog
4) Teams (forgive here) 145/1450/1405 (pick two) were playing on the same alliance. Team A was told they were being bypassed and could not touch their control station for some reason. Team B, having similar numbers, was the intended target of this statement by the field personnel and blithely tried to get their robot to go- while it just sat there. Thus two robots on the same alliance sat through the whole match. Instead of terminating the match immediately an offer of 10 points for the 'error' to the score of the next match was made... which was negotiated into a complete rematch. The other alliance still won... but this sort of case is not covered *anywhere* in the rules when a field communication error results in a non-play event.
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In all my years in FIRST, field failures ALWAYS result in a replay of the match. And with the first part of this, again the volunteers are human, they are all dealing with an insanely new system, and FLR (as many regionals) had no way to have enough technical staff to support all of the issues. Our field ran INCREDIBLY smoothly given that the field crew was troubleshooting an entirely new system with NO help from NI or any of the other creaters of the system for most of the event. I happen to have heard about the majority of the relatively few field errors, and that one was a human mistake, so they replayed it. Its not a rule change.
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Originally Posted by purduephotog
5) Ahh- Battery Voltage. Our team was told that Control could not read our battery voltage and we would be 'bypassed' if it happened again- and we would not be allowed back on the floor to power cycle the robot nor would any of the refs undertake said action. After strong urging of the students to immediately open up a negotiation with the referees (we did not have a spare module) they offered to allow us to pass if the voltage was displayed on our DS. In all cases the voltage was displayed to the user- and in all cases the robot functioned correctly in all modes of the competition. There was never a repeat issue with the voltage. I re-read the cRio notes (lost the link just now) but 3.1.8? in the manual stated that there is a known issue with the communication just dropping out. Now, call me old fashioned, but when there is a known bug in this manner... shouldn't there be a bit more flexibility here?
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My husband ended up playing tech support for a lot of the regional, and there were a LOT of code issues with teams. This is an entirely new system, both for the robot controls and the field controls. There were a lot of issues that were technically the fault of the teams (faulty code), but without a lot of controls or programming background, many of the teams might not have seen them. I know our programming team spent A LOT of time running around trying to help other teams troubleshoot and get things like this fixed as our programmers had spent an excessive amount of time pouring over the new system and working with the Beta setup & info. But speaking from running events, and having played "field tech support" myself, its hard to hold up an entire event to help one team troubleshoot an issue, sometimes you have to do the best you can and just move on. If its truly the team's fault, its not fair to let them reset, when all the other teams have setup correctly.
Maybe this is just because I know a lot of the people that were running the show and have a bunch of the inside scoop... but I think this regional was run very very well. The crew had some tough things to deal with, but they did everything they could to make the fair and correct calls. As much as I can tell rules were followed well and the field ran smoothly thanks to a lot of hard work. There are always a few hiccups, but thats normal. And it seemed like a lot of the teams were very very patient and understanding. Everyone knows the troubles we have all faced with the new control system and in my mind everyone was incredibly gracious in working with the volunteers and staff to help the event run well.