Don't count goals scored for the opposition - Yes or No?

[Jimmy Cao]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

I would think that just the presence of the rule would be enough to dispel most teams from following the practice. How much intentional tipping did you see at events this past weekend?

Keep it simple - kick originated from red and entered blue's goal - IF DETECTED by the person assigned to catch it, it doesn't count, regardless of how it got there.

The problem with that is that people don't like ambiguous rules. Leave it ambiguous, and you'll get complaints that its not well stated. If you want to put a rule like this, I would think you need to define it clearly.

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Most intentional scoring attempts from the opposition should be direct, obvious, and easily detectable by the volunteer(s) responsible for tracking them. Discount those. Accidental "deflection" scores and such will not be as obvious and are less likely to be caught. No big deal.

Much like refs sometimes fail to catch penalties, I'm sure some opposing scores would be missed. But the obvious ones should always be caught, and that's the main goal.

The intent behind the automated scoring system is that it is exactly that. Automated. FIRST is trying to remove human scoring for this, because that is inherently flawed. Granted, the automated scoring isn't flawless (at least it's better than 08 lap counters), but introducing volunteers to count the scores adds additional complexity.

Another, somewhat unrelated point. Last week, I saw one instance where the defending robot pushed a ball into the goal it was defending (or was pushed and therefore pushed a ball in). How would these be called? Leaving ambiguity in the rules leaves different events to have different interpretations. That causes problems. Adding additional wording results in more rules. Neither is very pretty.

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

I'm sure many will "go after" the root cause in the offseason. This is an attempt to discuss meaningful ways to address rising concerns THIS season.

I see it this way. If your robot has a roller that sometimes pulls the balls under the robot, incurring G46 penalties, how would you fix it? Would you try to adjust the placement of weight on your robot to fix it, or fix the roller itself? This scoring for your opponents concept is nothing new. Its a new reincarnation of old concepts. This new reincarnation is more powerful, and probably more widespread, but even if it is a bad concept (which I don't think it is), FIRST is no more likely to ban scoring on yourself than they are to change the ranking system.