Varying levels of enforcement...

[Gui Cavalcanti]

Alright, I'm getting sick of this. I've only personally been to VCU, but I've been hearing stories of all the regionals and their varying rules and enforcement.

For example, entanglement. At VCU they didn't DQ anyone by default, just because of the robot design, but they were usually very strict about it. MOE and Sparky 3.0 got disqualified once or twice each for going under the goals with their arms, any tethers that broke the vertical plane of the goal's platforms were DQed, and any treads or special wheels that were on the verge of ripping up carpet got a warning.

Now I'm hearing that some regionals didn't have any DQs at all, even if there were plenty of reasons for it. Robots that got stuck for entire matches and didn't have the offending 'bots DQed, tethers going under the goals, etc. What's up with that??

Also, this battery thing. At VCU there were 5 different announcements about battery chargers. On Thursday, it was mostly "All teams, please note, the 4-amp battery chargers from last year will NOT be allowed, and the two batteries in the 2002 kit of parts are the ONLY batteries allowed on your robot." On Friday it had a different tune during the day, "All teams please note that the 4-amp chargers WILL be allowed in the pits, please note that the chargers WILL be allowed." Then it proceeds on Saturday to teams scrambling to borrow other teams' batteries during finals because they couldn't get theirs fully charged.

Is there anyone at FIRST we can email or notify about the weirdness going on in the game this year? I'd really like to send them an informative message right about now...