YMTC: Defensive Strategies

[Matt Reiland]

My reasoning for the question is that the rulings at different regionals has been very different.

I spoke with teams at Great Lakes and they were warned immediately that any sort of high speed ramming would not be allowed and the repeat offenders would be DQ'd possibly for the entire event if it continued. At other regionals such as Pittsburgh it was allowed to continue over and over with penalties to the offending teams but nothing any higher than that resulting in significant damage to many robots.

I would ask FIRST to talk about it next ref meeting so that the regionals are scored and ruled the same. Also I would ask teams (Coaches and Mentors) that are using a defensive strategy to also consider the damage that high speed ramming causes and not use it as a strategy. Again 'rubbins racing' but if this is now battlebots, we didn't bring the right robot this year, I fully expected the refs to call some of the matches I watched yet they let the ramming go on.