494........

[Jason Kixmiller]

Speaking from a student driver's point of view, I think that it is impossible to have any sort of ruling or standard to dictate the difference between an aggressively defensive strategy or a disregard for gracious professionalism. Robustness has long been a standard of FIRST design for many teams, and if a team is willing to take a risk with the placement of critical components of their machine, the team should be willing to accept the consequences of having those components damaged. I am in no way condoning malicious intentions, but intentions are nearly impossible to define. Contact is a part of the game as are aggressive defensive tactics.

[LoganB]

Originally Posted by Greg McCoy

I doubt that 494 had any intentional interest in damaging your robot. They played defense and played it well repeatedly, and their actions, while frustrating to those of us with offensive robots worked for them. This competition demands robust, powerful machines, and that's something you should shoot for in the design of your robot.



In the Archimedes finals (3rd match), 494 came through the back side of the stationary goal and used their arm to prevent our team from capping the stationary goal, which would have eliminated them and put us on Einstein. Being the TechnoKats arm operator, I must say that there was no way that I could get the ball in the goal. That's a heck of a machine, and they sucessfully defended our cap. I'm not aware of this breaking any rules. As far as other matches, many teams rammed other robots repeatedly, this isn't just something that 494 did.

Kudos to 494 for a tough bot, and congrats to the whole alliance for the Championship.

I agree 494 played great defense and it’s not fair to say oh they won so they played rough. We were hit like no tomorrow trying to hang and some robots were trying to take hooks off the bar. So I stand behind 494 and there awesome drive train and driver and awesome game play. Also 71 and 494 are awesome teams to work with and even better to win the championship with. Also 45 love the bot and great Archimedes final showing.

[Ryan Dognaux]

I don't care what anyone else says - 494 had a great robot, and there's no denying it. They play rough, yes I will agree with that, but they play to win. Things like this happen whether we want them to or not (i.e. IRI Finals Match - 2002) It's just the way it is. We can sit here and debate about 494's robot, or we can remember how they've played and prepare for next year.

Again, Congrats to 494.

[Heretic121]

hello... im not going to get deep into this except, i do have the match footage of where they rode up into our robot and cut our wires with thier "goal grabber" and the before (before quaterfinals started) and after (when we got back to the pits)... i am going to be posting of all them once i get them uploaded (like in 2-3 days)

[Greg McCoy]

What are you trying to accomplish?

Originally Posted by D.J. Fluck

If FIRST were to make a ruling, what would they rule? They followed all the pinning procedure properly as far as I could tell, they were rough, but they did say in the intro animation: Robots should be able to handle impact... or something to that extent..

I again seriously doubt that anyone was trying to intentionally cut your wires...we got some of our arm wires hooked and had to do some careful driving to get them out of another robot's arm in one match...had we broken anything, it would have been our fault. Unless they have a robot feature/driving style that clearly is intended for the destruction of the robots, I don't see what FIRST can do. In my opinion, the refs did a good job, there are a lot of things to watch for in these matches.

[austind27]

This year 494 built an incredible robot. Their robot played the game with the best of them. They drive to win and deserve to win. Every one of their robots is fast, strong and robust. If everyones robot was built as well as theirs this thread wouldn't exist. 494 is one of the best teams in FIRST history. They may drive agressive but they also are one of the most professional teams in FIRST as well. Team 27 looks forward to competing with you guys at IRI, The Kettering Kickoff and Ford Sweet Repeat this summer. Congradulations on your National Championship win and all you other awards!!

[Combat Chuck]

First off, I want to thank 494 for helping us with our robot at the Peachtree Regional. They are one of the nicest teams I've ever met. I sat with them on saturday during the Archimedes eliminations. They were very friendly and answered my questions. They even were GP when some calls didn't go their way, such as when they were ruled not hanging during the first match against 237. I was amazed at their alliance and strategy, where 71 would herd, cap, and hang, while 494 would herd for a second, defend the other teams, and then perhaps hang. I think that what 494 did was perfectly fine. Many a time they'd zoom from chute to chute to prevent balls from being dropped off. I'm sure 494 feels bad about any undue damage occured, but I find no fault with their actions.

[Ben Lauer]

I realise that some of the driving practices of 494 were not GP. I was the real time scorer for all matches on Archimedies. I saw every one of those matches. I know that there opponents didn't like there behavior, but if they are not causing damage, then there only flaw is not being GP. I talked with two of the refs later and they agree with me on this point.

They did mention the 494 had been warned about this defensive practice, and during the final rounds team 494 did try to play a safer defensive stragety, and played clean matches from there on out.

[Terminator6]

I have to add here that part of GP is not second guessing the refs...these refs put so much time into what they do and know the rules....they want the game to be played with the rules enforced....but not scrutinized over....if you have a concern about the way the refs were calling....then take that up with the refs about the way they define the rules....dont single out a team and gripe about their style of play...GP is the way people act plus how you respond....and quite frankly some of these responses insult me...."hook of death" is something one child says to another back when we were all in elementary school

[Rob27]

The Martians are the most agressive team I know. This thread proves that sometimes they go a little overboard, but THEY ARE NOT OUT TO DESTROY YOUR ROBOT! 494 builds very robust robots, and if you don't do the same, it's not 494's fault. Their robots are often seen on Einestien for a reason, and I'm sure they'll be there next year, too.

Congratulations to 494 on the Chapmpionship and the SPORTSMANSHIP Award. We haven't played with or against you this year, so I look forward to the off-season events.

[Joe Menassa]

a little rough housing is ok. sometimes things break, wires get cut, and people get angry. this is something we have learned to deal with year after year. in fact, many of us are guilty of it.

is it bad? not necessarily. defense is defense and most of us in the heat of the moment will do everything that is in our power to win. i know 494 didnt purposely design their robot to cause damage. our robot suffered damage simply because it isnt completly shielded. they just happen to hit us in our weakest point. it was an unfortunate mistake, im sure if anyone for 494 responds they will admit they were just trying to push and shove not disable our robot.

there is a limit to the rough housing and it is tough to judge. i hope that teams realize that pushing a shoving is fine just be careful with arms and goal grabbers and what not, the things that can penatrate other robots are what we all have to look out for.

[Jay TenBrink]

As the engineering coach for team 494, I will say this:

During the play-offs we received a warning from the refs for aggressive play. I was also informed by a young man from one of our opponents' teams what we had done to their robot with our goal hook. I appologized to him and then we tied the hook back out of the way. After the next match, we removed it from the robot.

I take personal responsibility for putting a robot out onto the field with a device such as this. It was a mistake, I am sorry, I was wrong.

Never again will we put a robot on the field with a device that can act like a harpoon, spear, etc.

Sincerely,

Jay TenBrink
Engineering Coach
team 494

[Rick]

That was very nice of you to apoligize and it seems like for the most part everyone is calm and understands what happened. Those Archimedes finals were the best out of any division I think. Its good to know that we can all have no hard feelings and go on to compete again next year.

(PS. Maybe even sooner if some of 121 makes it to IRI this year .)

[suneel112]

Thank you Mr. TenBrink,

That's what FIRST is all about, admitting any possible mistakes and fixing them, while being graciously professional. Kudos to you.

As for ME, I appologize for my earlier angry rant over 1388. Its the best we've ever done as a team EVER. I hope you guys forgive me, because even though that wouln't have "normally" happened, I still shouldn't post stuff demeaning to another team.

Sorry.

During the matches, everything can get pretty confused. When you're driving it is hard to draw a line between trying to win by playing good defense, and taking it a little too far. The line itself would be blurry, if you did.

I know everyone noticed the martians (awesome) defense because I got about 4 class from Jeff Waegelin telling me to watch out for their defense before Einstein.
"They are going to play defense on you...the WHOLE MATCH."
"Okay, I'll make sure to tell everyone about that. Bye"
*cell phone rings*
"NO, REALLY ELLEN. THEY ARE GOING TO PLAY DEFENSE ON YOU!"
And that happened a few seperate times...with lots of people from 201 screaming the same thing in the background.

Even after being fairly warned about their defensive ability, I didn't think it would be *that* strong. Anyway... I think defense is simply another strategy. As long as you aren't intentionally damaging someone it's okay. In my opinion... the martians great defense was an integral part of their championship. I think they were within the limits of gracious professionalism. (Of course, I am speaking from the matches we played... I didn't see the finals in archimedes.)

Ellen