Problem with Penalties

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Originally Posted by Steve W

To have a rule without a penalty is rather useless. As many have seen with the robot rules and others that no penalty was expressed, they were not followed. To tell someone that they cannot speed does not stop them. Heck they speed even with penalties. People will always break the rules, penalties are a reinforcement of expectations.

FIRST has plenty of rules without penalties. For instance, your only allowed 4 CIMs on the robot. You can't slap an extra CIM on there in return for an extra 10 pt. penalty every match... That would be crazy...

I'm not saying they should design a game with NO penalties. I'm just saying they should design a game that doesn't RELY on penalties. If you go back and look at all the games you'll see that there have been plenty that didn't rely on penalties.