Removing game pieces from Trailers

[Kevin Sevcik]

I said this in another thread, but I'm going to guess that descoring and goal blocking will be legal. You can reach outside your own bumpers, if you stay inside the 28x38x60 box. You can touch other trailers. There is no mention of descoring or blocking. There is no support for extrapolating from trailer tipping to descoring. The size requirements are going to be serious enough that they'll discourage a large number of teams, if not all teams.

To correct a few misconceptions I've seen here, as well:

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

One thing that makes it very hard to block/descore from your own trailer is the trailer needs to behind the short side (28).

This is not true. The hitch only needs to be at the outer edge of your robot. You could put it on a corner if you wanted.

Originally Posted by railerobotics

I think even if somebody figures out how to eject balls from a trailer, they will still be counted. I say this because, in the rules it says if a trailer tips over and the balls are lost, however many there were in there at that time, before it tipped, are still scored.

There is no basis for this. The tipping rule is obviously to keep robots from tipping themselves over at the end of matches, descoring in a massive fashion and making it impossible to actually score.

Originally Posted by taylort

Secondly, the energy and time you spend de-scoring pieces could be much more efficiently and effectively in legally scoring pieces as the game is designed...which seems much more graciously professional to me.

Efficiency and utility of a descoring strategy are arguable. But if a strategy is obviously within the letter and spirit of the rules, it makes no sense to talk about it being more or less GP. It's not a value that can apply to a legal strategy. It's like saying that building a robot to win the competition isn't GP. Please try to apply GP to situations where is makes some sense, as otherwise you're just diluting the meaning.