Is defense necessary in practice rounds?

[Joe J.]

With most of the past games I've seen I would agree that Practice day should be for practicing scoring, BUT this year we are not only allowed to play defense in the game, theres a whole 40 second period of the game where your alliance is on DEFENSE. Its a major part of this years game so you should practice it.

[Btower]

From the tournament manual.

8.2 PRACTICE ROUNDS
8.2.1 Schedule
The Practice Rounds will be played all day Thursday. The Practice Rounds schedule will be available on
Thursday morning. Practice Rounds will be randomly assigned. Each team will be assigned an equal number
of Practice Rounds. At some events, additional rounds may be available on a standby basis. Each Practice
Round will consist of a ten-minute period in which teams may operate their robot on the field. The first five
minutes of each Practice Round will start with a 10-second autonomous period, and followed by a “free-form”
session, in which the robots may be exercised to evaluate operational characteristics, gain driver experience,
determine system robustness, etc. The second five minutes of each Practice Round will be conducted as a
“match” with approximately two minutes for set up, two minutes and fifteen seconds of regular game play
(including autonomous operations), and one minute to clear the field.

So I'd say defense is necessary and allowed within reason. Thankfully, I'm the one who gets to decide "reason", sorry.

Seriously though, should we make an field announcement, say at a drivers meeting prior to the start of practice rounds?

On a second practice related topic. Should we allow team extra practices on a standby basis, if another team does not show?

[Jon Jack]

If a team is playing defense in the practice rounds and they see that a robot is breaking, on their alliance or not, they should have the common sense to make an effort NOT to hit that robot.

I do agree that if a team needs to test a part of their robot and they request not to be hit that match, teams should not hit them.

Remember, that team could be on you alliance in qualifying matches. If that team isn't allowed to test their robot, they might not be as effective of an alliance partner as they could be.

[gren737]

Defense during the practice rounds at BAE was fairly significant, we were actually flipped during one and one of our friends, Team Discovery, had a gearbox broken from being rammed by an oppenent.

The more practice time teams have to get "dialed in" on thursday means for better competition friday and saturday. If they spend all day thursday in the pits fixing stuff that's broken during practice rounds they may never be able to compete up to their full potential when it counts.