What we learned from week 1

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by dman14

Many teams, including my own, read the rules to the letter, and hence designed our robot in such a way that it will most certainly be touching it's tower while in shooting position. We discarded shooting from under the centre of the tower, and limited ourselves to the edges in order to be in the protection zone. I felt that it was a design constraint that needed to be given attention, rather than a loophole, or poorly written rule.

I am very sure that Dustin and his team read the rules to the letter. He is not proposing a rule change because he screwed up his own design. (edit: my apologies, this came out way harsher than I meant it to...)

Even if you do play to the edges of the tower, there is significantly less protection than you'd expect. Touching the corner of the tower, and then aiming while still clearly touching it, are both non-trivial. Lots of teams would drive up and touch or almost touch it, but then started to aim, drifted a half inch away, and then were completely vulnerable to defense. Not to mention referees seem to err on the side of no penalty when contact is ambiguous.

The pyramid is no 2012 key.