Team Update 16 (2016)

[Boe]

I am somewhat disappointed we don't get to see how high they would have ended up being at the Edward Jones Dome.

[Drakxii]

Why the G13 change? It only makes 2 ball auto more dangerous and really how effective can throwing your one auto boulder at the other alliance be?

[Bob Steele]

Originally Posted by Drakxii

Why the G13 change? It only makes 2 ball auto more dangerous and really how effective can throwing your one auto boulder at the other alliance be?

i believe the change is to call a second foul and give a crossing if a robot captures a midline ball and then contacts a robot with it during a midline crossing. The way it was worded before, a team did not get a second fall/crossing penalty if the contact with a robot was through a ball. It had to be robot to robot contact to get the extra penalties.

Transitive contact is when you contact something through something else... in this case...while holding a ball you contact an opposing robot while your robot is over the midline during auto.

IMO that is the reason for the change.

I wonder how well this would be called if both robots were going for the same ball and they both grabbed it in auto? If both robots were over the midline I assume both would get the same penalty. This would be very difficult to call for the referee.


Evan I think your explantion is better than mine...

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by Drakxii

Why the G13 change? It only makes 2 ball auto more dangerous and really how effective can throwing your one auto boulder at the other alliance be?

All they did was fix a loophole. In order for G13 to trigger, your ROBOT still has to enter the midline zone. With the previous wording, if your robot entered the midline zone but only touched another robot through a boulder (and not your ROBOT), technically there were no add-on fouls or additional defense crossings awarded. That is now fixed.

It also incidentally makes boulder wars a lot riskier. Where previously you could maybe stomach taking the foul for a close call at the midline to stop a 2-ball auto, now you're risking a double foul and an automatic auto cross.

Edit: Sniped by Coach :-P

[Drakxii]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

All they did was fix a loophole. In order for G13 to trigger, your ROBOT still has to enter the midline zone. With the previous wording, if your robot entered the midline zone but only touched another robot through a boulder (and not your ROBOT), technically there were no add-on fouls or additional defense crossings awarded. That is now fixed.

It also incidentally makes boulder wars a lot riskier. Where previously you could maybe stomach taking the foul for a close call at the midline to stop a 2-ball auto, now you're risking a double foul and an automatic auto cross.

Edit: Sniped by Coach :-P

If refs see it this way I don't have a problem with the rule.

Unfortunately the rule could also be read that fouls can be called if both teams are touching a boulder that is on the middle line, even if neither bot enters the volume above the midline.

Also does a robot still have be in contact with the boulder for the "transitive" contact to be applied? I.E. is it a foul if a team's auto mode messes up and causes a boulder to roll/shoot/whatever in to an opposing alliance bot?

[CalTran]

Originally Posted by Drakxii

Also does a robot still have be in contact with the boulder for the "transitive" contact to be applied? I.E. is it a foul if a team's auto mode messes up and causes a boulder to roll/shoot/whatever in to an opposing alliance bot?

Assumedly so, as rolling/shooting/whatever would fall under G39

[Bryce2471]

[STRIKETHROUGH]The higher seeded ALLIANCE will always be assigned to the Red side of the FIELD.[/STRIKETHROUGH]

Why is no one talking about this?

How will the alliance colors be decided for playoff matches?

[Kpchem]

Originally Posted by Bryce2471

Why is no one talking about this?

How will the alliance colors be decided for playoff matches?

I believe this clause was leftover from Recycle Rush and just was not removed. This year alliance colors are being determined as they did prior to 2015. The red alliance is the higher seed provided seeds had held in the bracket.

For example, the winner of 1v8 will be red regardless of who wins the set and plays the winner of 4v5. The winner of that semifinal is red in the finals.

Likewise the winner of 2v7 is red in the semifinals against the winner of 3v6, and the winner of that semifinal is blue in the finals.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Bryce2471

How will the alliance colors be decided for playoff matches?

1: Red, Red, Red
2: Red, Red, Blue
3: Red, Blue, Blue
4: Red, Blue, Red
5: Blue, Blue, Red
6: Blue, Blue, Blue
7: Blue, Red, Blue
8: Blue, Red, Red

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Bryce2471

Why is no one talking about this?

How will the alliance colors be decided for playoff matches?

We went into semifinals as the 7th seed. Under the old rules, we would have had blue bumpers. We told our partners we will stay in blue and our opponents queued up in red. Then the FTAs told us to switch. Then we cited the rule and we switched. Then they figured out the FMS was operating under the 2014 rules and they could not manually switch us so we switched BACK to red.

We figured out it was one of the many cases where somebody probably copy-pasted 2015 to 2016 and this case did not have a lot of instances where this would have happened until this week. 1v8 and 2v7 will always send a red alliance to semis and 3v6 and 4v5 will always send a blue alliance to semis. 1/8v4/5 will always send red to finals and 2/7v3/6 will always send a blue team to finals, just like in the olden days.

I feel really bad because everyone at the event did their jobs right (our drive coach read the rule to the head ref, the head ref agreed with him, and the FTAs tried to accommodate based on the rules, and field staff communicated the changes as fast as possible) but we all ended up contributing to a loss of about 20 minutes of time (the event still finished on time though, which was AWESOME)

[Jeffrafa]

Originally Posted by Drakxii

If refs see it this way I don't have a problem with the rule.

Unfortunately the rule could also be read that fouls can be called if both teams are touching a boulder that is on the middle line, even if neither bot enters the volume above the midline.

If neither robot enters the volume of the midline, then G13 has not been broken, plain and simple. The revised description of the consequences for a violation does not effect the basic rule (breaking the mid-line volume).

I can't find the video of it, but I saw this happen at a week 1 event - a red robot drove across the midline and pushed a stationary blue robot several inches transitively through a boulder (no direct robot contact). Only 1 foul was called due to how the rule had been written. I was a ref in week 2, and we discussed this scenario prior. We decided since R13 did not mention transitive contact, we would enforce it the same way as was done in week 1. I'm glad to see the loophole closed, as it preserves the intent of the violation.

[GDB]

I'll be honest, a lot of teams were not just doing this because 254 or 1678 were using overhead cameras on poles. Some teams at the Arizona North Regional were doing it because they specifically knew there was no height restriction. Now that this rule is implemented, a lot can agree the safety is definitely more concerning than the advantage over another.

[jds2001]

Originally Posted by Jeffrafa

I can't find the video of it, but I saw this happen at a week 1 event - a red robot drove across the midline and pushed a stationary blue robot several inches transitively through a boulder (no direct robot contact). Only 1 foul was called due to how the rule had been written. I was a ref in week 2, and we discussed this scenario prior. We decided since R13 did not mention transitive contact, we would enforce it the same way as was done in week 1. I'm glad to see the loophole closed, as it preserves the intent of the violation.

I was also a ref in week 2, and this exact thing happened. We asked about it, and got a response of no automatic cross. I guess since it happened (apparently more than once), it caused them to look at it and change the rule to something that more closely matches the intent. A good change, IMO.

[bkahl]

Originally Posted by Boe

I am somewhat disappointed we don't get to see how high they would have ended up being at the Edward Jones Dome.

I imagine it would've looked similar to this:
https://youtu.be/oiMaHpT7bvg

[KosmicKhaos]

Well it would appear that our periscope will now be modified to be 8'8". Benefits of using a pool slimmer pole is that it allows us to adjust height easily.