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Bring it on!
I for one am excited about the possibility of seeing an effective kidnapping robot, given they do not damage the opponent's robot. Is this move offensive? Sure, as offensive as moving a goal or dumping a load of balls. If playing against a kidnapping robot, would I expect my team to do everything within the game to avoid be kidnapped? Sure, as I would expect them to try to prevent a team from capturing the game-winning goal or dumping the game-winning ball. Is there a risk? Absolutely. But I recall several matches this year where a robot was dumping a load of balls, and their opponent rammed into them attempting to jar them from the goal. This impact nearly resulted in the ball robot tipping over (and would have likely resulted in unintentional damage). Similarly, our robot actually lost an arm during a goal tugging war. Again, unintentional damage. I would anticipate that this type of unintentional damage would actually be more significant than a well-designed kidnapping robot would inflict. It's spelled out very clearly in the rules that this is an acceptable action.
However, all of this talk about offensive countermeasures or less care when playing a kidnapping robot bothers me. When playing against a goal-controlling robot, or a ball-gathering robot, we will employ strategies to attempt to win while maximizing qualifying points. The same is true for kidnapping robots. However, if these strategies are unsuccessful, you will not see us attempt to maliciously maul another robot, regardless of what kind of robot it is. That is truly ungracious proffesionalism at its worst, imho. Not only is it not good sportsmanship, but what kind of message does it send to the students?
While I respect the fact that your team spent 6 weeks pouring sweat, blood, and tears into the design, fabrication, and testing of your robot, I also recognize that any kidnapping robot team spent the same 6 weeks doing the same, with the additional responsibility of ensuring that they do not damage a robot that they kidnap. Until proven otherwise, I will always assume a kidnapping robot has met this challenge. How gracious would it be to assume otherwise?
Also, a fork-lifting robot is only a subset of a kidnapping robot. Heck, they might not even be designed to kidnap - merely to lift the front of a robot to reduce their opponent's traction. If it's legal, I'd like to see it at Nationals.
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