Where Logomotion is going...

[GGCO]

While my memories of the 2011 Niles District event in Michigan are still fresh, I thought I'd share a few thoughts about how Logomotion is going to be played in the near future. These ideas are solely my opinion and are based on my personal observations as our team's primary driver.

1. Holy penalties batman!
* I understand the refs are just doing their job, but my problem is with the rules
At Niles, it didn't seem that teams were playing more sloppy than usual (although I'll be the first to admit it wasn't as intense as an event like GVSU last week), but there seemed to be more penalties because the refs were much more strict on calling them.

An example would be towards Saturday, the refs all of a sudden penalized teams for pushing other teams into their zones. We had never experienced this before, even in the finals at GVSU where we played aggressive defense, and I am kind of wondering why all of a sudden this is changing.

Lane violations are STILL a HUGE problem. I'm honestly surprised FIRST hasn't lightened up on these rules. Like they did last year with the rules about balls getting caught under the robot. I've rarely seen a robot bump another robot while they were in their own lane, but the majority of these penalties occur when opponents aren't anywhere near the lane and the robot who is penalized just brushed the tape. In fact, refs even call a penalty when the robot's bumper breaks the outer most plane of the tape, but doesn't even go into the lane at all!

I understand these are the literal rules, but my word they're WAY too strict. FIRST needs to stop creating these excessive penalties to get teams to play the game how THEY want it to be played. If FIRST wants to discourage defense, then they need to design a game around that - or not have alliances. We'll see how that works. *cough* 2001 *cough*

2. Common household lightswitches
Earlier on Saturday, we had our minibot inspected. We were informed of several "concerns". Mainly, the fact that our minibot used two switches that weren't the kind you'd find on the wall of your house. One of the switches we used came in the Tetrix kit we received, and the other we bought from a hardware store. The inspector argued that if he followed the literal wording of the rules and followed what the GDC publically posted on the FIRST forums, then our minibot would have been illegal. But he allowed us to use it anyways. Cool?

What I'm taking away from this is that once teams get to states, they're going to find out that (if this inspector is correct) their minibots are illegal and that's going to cause a lot of teams a LOT of grief. I think FIRST needs to clarify this in a team update ASAP.


Anyone have anything else they'd like to add?