Lessons learned 2005: The negative

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

Since all the negatives I have come up with are already here, I will not list any. However, the liquid rules are a HUGE problem.

Cory,

Here is your response in this thread:



I think you are toting the company line a bit too much here. Let me tell you that in order to avoid penalties, you must understand what gets you the penalty in the first place. The definitions of "in the loading zone" and "in the process of receiving a tetra" changed several times this season. They even changed after the regionals were over. They even changed at the driver's meeting at the Championship.

Did you know that at the driver's meeting Benji actually said that a robot could sit in the loading zone and score tetras and if another robot hit them, then it would be a penalty. I was there, I heard it and couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Did you know that a team could sit in the loading zone and not be in the act of loading a tetra (obvious to everyone) and draw a foul from a team obviously going toward a far goal to score? This happened several times at the Championship and changed the way my team played the game. If you don't believe me, look at the tapes of elimination rounds in Detroit where 245 and 217 were on the same team and we went across the field a lot. Then look a the tapes from the Championship where 245 and 217 didn't go across even once due to the fear of penalties. My team's behavior was changed by the "liquid" rules of FIRST and it is my #1 priority to help fix this problem next year.

I see what you're saying here, Paul. I didn't think you would be allowed to score a tetra while in the zone still (How can you score a tetra, if you haven't finished loading it, by FIRST's definition of loading?)

With regards to the second half of your post, Update 15 or whatever it was changed the definition of loading to be "when the robot has left the zone", not when it has finished receiving the tetra from the loader. Personally, I don't like that, and I agree with you that teams received penalties because of it, and that it really wasn't against the spirit of the rule, but it had to be called because that's what the word of the rules said.