Safety Zone on Playing Field

[fox46]

Hmm- don't like that one... So as long as you get your opponent to push you into their scoring area you can harass them all you want?

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by fox46

Hmm- don't like that one... So as long as you get your opponent to push you into their scoring area you can harass them all you want?

Not anymore. See Team Update #6

[sircedric4]

And it looks like by my fellow mentor bringing up the flaw in the "safe zone", the taking a 3 point penalty to stop a 36 point logo score, the GDC has taken notice. Team Update 6 makes it a death knell to enter the safe zone to block an opposing team score. The penalty is even greater than the pinning penalty. Automatic yellow card, and if you contact another robot it's a red card.

On one hand I am happy to see this change in the rules, because if it happens to us we have a specific ruling to pull out. We have been planning all along to be sitting in our safe zone scoring, so any discussion we had was in fear of the worst happening to us. This update pretty much makes the safe zones inviolate.

On the other hand, it is obvious that the GDC is making this game have shades of Overdrive with all the contact penalties and protected zones. I personally hated that aspect of Overdrive with the penalties more often than not deciding the matches. This almost makes defensive bots useless, which is a shame since a basic kitbot can't really do any scoring. This year is gonna be especially hard on the rookies I guess.

To stay on topic if you are completely inside your safe zone then you appear to be completely untouchable upon pain of lost game.

[Frenchie461]

Originally Posted by jethrow

ALL THE WAY IN.

^that's to be completely protected, whatever is sticking out can be hit by another robot, because no other robot can enter the zone.

[Koko Ed]

While everyone like comparing this game to 2007 because of the tubes this part of the game is very 2005 where parts of the field were just off limits.
Those penalties proved to be a humongous game changer back then and I expect them to do the same this year because I expect a large amount of teams to not bother to read the rules like they always do.
Smart teams will just make it a point to just stay away from parts of the field so there is no way they can get a penalty even by mistake.