Bad Call?

[smurfgirl]

Originally Posted by 1359th Scalawag

Entering the Finals, my team's alliance was doing great, we got both robots onto the ramp and would have won but the referees made a strange call. Part of the ramp robot we were on had an innertube under it. They decided not to give us that 60 points and we lost the match because of the rule that states "scoring robots must not be supported by any feild elements".

The intent of that rule is so that none of the robots that are lifted hang on the game structures or sit on innertubes. In this case, the supported robots were only supported by another robot but we were not given those 60 points. We lost the next match and were eliminated from the finals.

I would like imput from other teams. Was thier judgement right?

The same thing happened to us in semifinal match 1 when I was coaching... I was livid because I thought this was a misinterpretation of the rules* (and I've read the rulebook many times over) but I decided not to argue with the refs since their call is final. We actually ended up winning SF-2, so we played a third match which we also won, allowing us to continue to the finals.

The reason why I don't like this call is because it's inconsistent from match to match, from regional to regional. I wouldn't mind so much if FIRST could just standardize this rule and get it in print so the refs and the drivers know how to interpret it and can act accordingly. This way there won't be any surprises or confusion at the end of any given match.



*I see this as a misinterpretation of the rules because they say that a robot cannot be supported by the field or a field object/gamepiece. This call uses the transitive property to say that a robot supported by a robot supported by a gamepiece violates this aspect of the rules. But if you use the transitive property in the circumstance that there is no tube under the lower robot, this means that you have a robot supported by a robot supported by the field... and this would also be a rules violation. Since we know this counts for bonus points, I would assume it counts in the other scenario.