Playing Dirty

[Mr. Mac]

In spite of Adam's High Man's emotional accusations and misunderstandings about the placebo, he made some points that need to be addressed. We all know the placebo did not pin them for "half the match"; I watched the matches and I know that the refs did a good job of monitoring the 5 second pin rule; it is not considered pinning unless your robot is caught between an opponent's robot and an immovable field piece. You are not technically pinned when the opponent is pushing you and keeping you from going where you want to go.
Another misunderstanding is the role of the placebo: we said all along that the placebo was not a true placebo (see my other post on this thread where I explain the name) The placebo is suppose to supply some assistance to its alliance partner so they do not have to go 2 against 1 with anybody. The placebo will not be capable of winning patches (indeed, it could not score!) but it's whole point is to supply some support to its partner so that it's partner has a chance of winning. The real placebo is being built by students whose school is not involved with OCCRA this year. They called late Friday to say that the robot was not done yet and I had to russle up a last minute replacement; I put a sheet around an old robot we had at OSTCNE, deactivated all systems except the drive train, stuck a moose head on it, and gave it to one of the placebo builders to drive. There was only one driver of the placebo and he is from a team not competing in OCCRA. Adams High Man has some reason to think that he's "biased against certain teams". We can't have that: the placebo must be unbiased and help all its alliance partners equally. If there is any validity to this accusation of bias, I need to know it right away: please contact me ASAP. In the future, please bring complaints like this up to the officials immediately so that they can set the record straight then and there.
As far as the "dirty-aggressive" accusation, I did not see it. We had 4 impartial refs who did not see it. Perhaps the accuser needs to go back and re-read the OCCRA rules. Physical contact is certainly allowed.
At one point I thought the placebo was getting aggressive to the point where damage to another robot might occur; he was still within the rules of OCCRA and had not been warned yet by the refs, but I did not want to see it go that far; I went up to the placebo driver and reminded him (not during an OSTCNE match) that he is suppose to help his partner as much as he can but not to risk hurting any other robots. Perhaps when the switch to "passively resistant" occurred- I'm not sure. The other student sitting at the placebo driver station was not a placebo driver, but an OSTCNE student who was functioning as an OCCRA staff member and he was assigned the job of being pit crew for the placebo. Was the placebo too good? How good do you want the placebo to be when you have it as an alliance partner?