Protection to shooters

[Wayne Doenges]

This is for all teams tha have been to at least one regional.
In the FIRST rules 'Hurdling' is defined this way:

HURDLING: The act of completing a HURDLE. To be considered in the process of HURDLING,
the ROBOT must:
 be in its own HOME STRETCH, and
 be in POSSESSION of a TRACKBALL, and
 be moving toward the OVERPASS and/or elevating the TRACKBALL so that the top of the
TRACKBALL is higher than the LANE DIVIDER.

What hurdling protection is given to Shooters? Most shooters keep the ball low, just before they shoot. Like we do.
Are the refs giving penalties to opponents that interfere with shooters in their Home Stretch?

Thanks for any help.

Wayne Doenges
Team 1501 (THRUST)

[BigJ]

It's looks to me like if you are moving towards the Overpass you are protected; if you are not moving, you don't have protection under the current rules.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by BigJ

It's looks to me like if you are moving towards the Overpass you are protected; if you are not moving, you don't have protection under the current rules.

At San Diego no protection was given to shooters and often even interfering with arms/lifts wasn't called.

[Danny McC]

So does that mean an elevator up to stop a shot is legal?

[Mike Schreiber]

yes it means an elevator that stops, and is raising at ball at the specified is protected

[Danny McC]

I am saying if you want to play defense against a shooter and you put your elevator up is that legal? If your robot would be able to not tip.

[Lil' Lavery]

At VCU, arms/lifts were protected pretty well, but shooters didn't get nearly as much. 1731 saw a little bit of protection, but their method of "shooting" involved raising the trackball. Most teams interfering with hurdling against shooters merely got in front of them and held them up as long as possible.

[BornaE]

We had the same problem at Arizona in semifinals

842 kept blocking us in our home stretch moving toward the overpass with a trackball in our possession, but there were no penalties.

Anyways, it was a good parctice for avoiding defence that we will have against us in Vegas.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Danny McC

I am saying if you want to play defense against a shooter and you put your elevator up is that legal? If your robot would be able to not tip.

Hmm..I get what you're saying, to me it sounds like that would be interference. Not sure though. Anyone else

[Danny McC]

Alrigght. Because me and thefro were talking about that as a way of defense. And before we try anything I just wanted to clarify wether it was legal or not.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Danny McC

Alrigght. Because me and thefro were talking about that as a way of defense. And before we try anything I just wanted to clarify wether it was legal or not.

It's legal, provided you don't contact the trackball until it was released.

And 842 should probably have been called for interference, because 39 satisfied all three requirements for protection (in the situation described). (moving towards overpass, has trackball, in own homestretch)

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by EricH

It's legal, provided you don't contact the trackball until it was released.

And 842 should probably have been called for interference, because 39 satisfied all three requirements for protection (in the situation described). (moving towards overpass, has trackball, in own homestretch)

Thanks for clarifying that, like I said, I wasn't sure. It sounds like a good strategy that we could use against those awesome shooters.

[Nuttyman54]

Shooters should be protected as long as they're moving towards the overpass. The rules state:

be moving toward the OVERPASS and/or elevating the TRACKBALL so that the top of the
TRACKBALL is higher than the LANE DIVIDER.

and/or seems to mean that you need to be doing at least one of the two (either moving towards or elevating) in order to be protected.

[MCahoon]

I wonder if there is a loophole here; if a herder that carries the ball is protected in the home zone, it is in posession of a ball and is moving toward the overpass. There isn't anything in the rule that says the robot must even be capable of hurdling but would still be protected.

[falconmaster]

I am from 842. First of all I do not want to cause any hard feelings. The robot game is just that a game. In the interest of trying to figure out the game we had some issues.
For us to launch the track ball, we had to come to a stop and then start the firing sequence. The sequence involved lowering our forklifts to allow the launching the track ball. About a second later the pnuematic catapult launches the track ball. We were told that once we start the firing sequence we would not be allowed to be hit by another robot. After three times being interfered with while we were launching in our home stretch and all, and no penalties called, we were told that the ball must be moving, or in other words, we were not allowed to be interfered with when the ball is actually launching. So according to the rules as interpreted by the refs at the AZ regional, we were not launcing even though we started our launch sequence. Based on this rule interpretation, we decided that the only defence against team 39 was to interfere with there setup for launching, because if they are not actually launching then it is fair game.
Their driving up to the hurdle before launching is eqivalanet to us stopping and lowering our lift arms to fire.
I think that is why we did not get called.

All this being said, I would rather have teams that have clearly shown that they are starting to fire should not be interefred with. This would allow us and 39 to fire without intereference. But hey,Iam not the ref.
Based on this bit on info and some othwer things we learned, we will be implementing them in LA and LV and we hope to see how it works against teams like 39.
They are a great team and have built a great bot, they were also very gracious to explain to us how they got their launcher to work.

On the field though we must do all we can to benifit our alliance. That is all we were trying to do. Playing the game as it was being interpreted.
I hope this explains why we played why we did.