Problem with Penalties

[dtengineering]

If there were too many matches decided by penalties, I would suggest that is the fault of the teams rather than the fault of the game. I humbly suggest to those teams that do not like receiving penalties that they try very, very hard to avoid them.

We had discussions with our drive team before our first regional, and after our first penalty about how to avoid penalties, and remained largely penalty-free throughout two regionals. Yes, it did mean that we had to give up some opportunities to score points, but we did the math... taking a ten point penalty and scoring a ten point hurdle, vs. scoring a two point lap is not difficult to compare. We built our robot to score, and play the game the way it was meant to be played, rather than to try and keep other teams from scoring.

Did many teams take penalties trying to prevent us from scoring? Well, a few... perhaps not as many as should have... but that is merely because they were not following the rules (clearly explained by the referee) regarding interfering with a team attempting to hurdle.

I don't like it either when matches are decided by penalties, but in my experience (Portland, Seattle and Atlanta... not that I saw ALL the matches at these events, of course...) there were a lot of teams that either failed to keep their robot moving in a counter-clockwise direction, or decided that rather than playing the game they would try to stop someone else from playing the game. I can't blame the GDC for the poor choices of teams that do not make an effort to follow the rules. (And yes, I know these rules took effort to follow, and am very proud of our drive team for their efforts to stay within the rules and avoid penalties. It was challenging, but certainly not impossible.)

I would, however, be willing to see penalties enacted in a different fashion... for instance a ten second deactivation of a robot that "goes backwards"... or seeing the refs provided with interfaces to the scoring system so that the penalties are recorded in "real time". But there has to be some significant consequence for teams who take the "easy path" of just blocking or interfering with a team that has taken the time and effort to design a robot that is actually capable of playing the game.

I can't argue with the suggestion that there might be a better solution... but I would suggest the best solution is simply for teams to follow the rules.

Jason