[FoleyEngineer]

We did it last weekend at Detroit in the playoffs. We were ahead by around 90 to 40 and there was only one supercell in play for the opponent with 30 seconds left. None of their robots had any significant balls in their bots and we had super cells waiting to be put into play. Our bot also had 10 to 15 balls in our bot which we could unload in about 3 seconds or so. Seeing the score was already more than double I ran across our alliance and told everyone to stop scoring, drive away from their supercell end of the field, and just spin in circles. We all did it.

Then I watched the field... basically nobody scored from our team or theirs for the next 10 seconds. At 20 seconds their team threw in the super cell and it missed. Now I knew we would be more than double. I told our drivers to dump about 5 cells into our partners trailer to give them 10 more points and kill the double spread. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to tell them to stop spinning so we never got the shot. We ended up winning 102 to 46 (I think) and got penalized the next match.

Besides the overall absurdity of having to think this way, I think the really dumb thing G14 is causing is that for the last 30 seconds of a big playoff match, our whole alliance basically quit doing anything and just sat there. No human players throwing in their balls, no robots doing anything. I ask you this... how entertaining was that for the crowd? What kind of spectator value was that? For basically 25% of the entire match we just "stood there"!

Imagine a basketball game where the last 10 minutes one team just stands on the floor and does nothing until the final buzzer? Does anyone besides me think that is a horrible way to show the world how cool robotics is, make visitors want to join robotics, and show off to your sponsors? Yech!

John