What penalties have you seen happen and how many points have they lost?
for me at FLR Ive seen 2 DQs. Both for a robot entering the side goal and both were during final matches. I also saw quite a few backbot penalties. from 5-20 points a match lost and i saw some ramming penalties.
And a Match had to be Replayed. It was Match 15 of Friday which was replayed on saturday because of field problems.
thats from 2 years ago!!!
The backbot offside penalties make no sense. All it takes is simple communication between the teams to tell one of them to stay back and not cross the line. As simple as following the rules and there were teams that just plain had issue with doing that.
We (1213) suggested that two bots head for on-side. The designated one, and an alternate just in case. One penality point per second makes it worth the fail-safe delay.
One penalty that I saw (it was called on our team) was ramming in autonomous mode. During the semis,
wWe set our auto-mode to go at about 85% speed across the field to try and stop a robot from dumping into the corner goal, like we had been doing all day. However, instead of getting in front of the robot, we smashed into them and received a 5 point penalty, making the score of the match 32-34, with our allience losing on the penalty.
This penalty could have been avoided by putting bumpers on the front of our robot, for anyone who wishes to avoid it,
We had the same one called on us, we had been doing it all day and then we did it and we got the 5 point point penality. We didnt have bumpers on the front of our robot but we asked if we could do it in reverse (where we have a bumper) and it was still illegal the only difference was that we won the match even with the penality.
That’s an interesting penalty. There was plenty of ramming into our robot in the semi-finals and other people rammed other robots in the Finals. There wasn’t a single penalty called. Hmmm…
Those ramming penalties might depend on how fast your robot moves, and whether the judges deem there was enough force to cause harm to the other robot.
In the semis, our alliance received a 5 point pinning penalty during the first match. 330 asked the refs who it was against, and they said against them for pinning against the base of the ramp. I didn’t know the base of the ramp counts as a wall you can pin other robots against, and that the 10 second rule applies there.
Our team, sincerely, got screwed in our first match. match 10.
Any of you who went to Great Lakes Regional and played in matches 1-11 know about the problems. Apparently, the computers went down. The referees had to make ALL the calls and count all the balls, manually.
I suppose, yes, we should cut them some slack since it wasn’t their fault.
But in our match, we got 3 penaltys for something we never did. We were the backbot and they said we crossed the line, not once, not twice, but THREE times. We have a video, folks, and our robot NEVER crossed the line.
We tried to talk to the refs about it, but they weren’t trying to hear it.
The next day we learned about the computer problems. They told us that all the matches that weren’t scored properly were fixed and those that truly won, won.
But then, later on in the day, we hear that in order for that to be true, you had to have ONE rep from each team in the match go up and talk to the refs. If only one rep decides that they don’t want to be gracious and say no to agreeing with the win change, then the ref turned his back and walked away.
I’m not sure who it was that said no. I wasn’t the rep from our team. As HP, I just throw balls. But I know that whoever that team rep was, they need to think about the spirit of FIRST. It’s about gracious professionalism. I hope they wouldn’t think that that would make their grandmother proud. Not at all.
Had this happened to any other teams out there?
To the best of our knowledge, what you mention never happened, at least not the way you put it.
THE FACTS:
It was matches 4 - 11 that were in question because the head referee may have transposed the scores on the sheets he handed to the scorekeeper. For that reason, and that reason alone, they invited the six teams involved to graciously sort it out.
If you went there wishing to get un-screwed on a judgment call, then I’m as sure as I am glad they sent you packing.
The reason I put 1-11, was because the computers were messing up in matches 1 + 2, went out in/during match number 2, and was therefore out in number 3 as well.
And i’m unsure as to what you are saying never happened.
The offside penalties…or…?
There were a few offsides calls, but that was really about it. What really surprised me was the lack of ramming penalties. In the 2nd match of the finals, we fell, and kept getting hit repeatedly. We had two broken welds, our electronics box was sheared from its bolts in one corner, and our main breaker switch was in two pieces. It wasn’t even mounted near where we were getting hit. For the last match of the finals, our back corner of the frame was held together with zip ties. I understand that it was supposed to be a rough game, but I didn’t think it was supposed to be this rough. Personally, I think ramming should be called a little more often.
I would agree. There was LOTS of ramming during the first 10 seconds, at full speed by the way. Not one ramming penalty that I saw. One of our team mates was even rammed while he was tipped over and a penalty wasn’t called.
or if you dont feel like reading all of it. We got screwed on penalties too, or lack of.
At St. Louis they were big on offsides penalties but other then that they let everything go.
At NJ (the only regional I went to so far) offsides were huge…multiple times we ended up penalizing the entire allaince something like 40 points for not having a back-bot…that adds up to all 3 robots being offsides the entire time that they needed a backbot.
I also saw DQ’s for incursion, which is easily enough aviodable…
The one penalty that I kept seeing that I was surprised about was teams getting penalized for stepping out of the drivers box. I’ve been a HP before, and yes I get excited in the heat of competition, but I always knew where my body was in reference to the driver’s box outline. I just don’t see how teams can absent mindedly hand points away like that.
Boy, I am really glad that I have been in NJ and FLR because for most part, reffing has been good to great. This year has had less problems than past years and I thought that that would lead to less complaining. I guess not.
Could one of the complainers about ramming show me the official description of ramming and in what times it should and shouldn’t be called? without direction from FIRST, the refs cannot make an informed call. I believe that the GDC has done a better job this year and should be generally happy with the results. A definition of ramming, eg : more than 6 feet or only in driver mode , would help to clarify with refs and competitors.
I found that the penalties themselves were fair, but how they were being enforced was definitely not fair. At the Finger Lakes Regional I was Team 250’s Human Player, and I am well versed in the rules and penalties of the game. However, different refs have different measures of enforcing these rules. Such as how one time I was given a penalty for stepping up onto the metal bar in the back of the lower goal. I did not throw while up there, I just had my toe hit it and backed off immediately before throwing. Technically, yes, that is a foul and I was flagged for it. The ref was watching the spot carefully, not paying attention to anything else, and as soon as he saw it he flagged it, which is his job. Conveniently it didn’t cost us the match because then I would have been truly angered instead of just annoyed, however I then decided that while in queue I would watch the other side and see if the ref was watching as carefully. I saw kids stepping up onto the metal, and the ref flagging for nothing but major infractions which rarely if never occur. Now… why do the refs not change sides from time to time, or at least more consistently decide what they are going to call and not call? I think that different levels of enforcement on different sides is not fair. I am not saying that I shouldn’t have been flagged for the penalty I received, because that was in fact a penalty, but I think those breaking that rule on the other side should have been penalized as well.
We got a penalty for the 3-inch incursion into the lower goal, and our robot could only physically go 2 1/2 inches, we were limited by diamond plate… we got DQed. This is not fair, but I tried to argue it… and they wouldn’t listen :rolleyes:
We even offered to show them our robot and the impossibility of it all… oh well.
We were almost DQed for our coach standing between the drivers, not touching the controls.
I agree with these comments. The gist of the rule (as I can remember it, I know, I know I need to cite the rule but I don’t have it in front of me) was that ramming intended to destroy another robot is against the rules. Since we cannot read the minds of the drivers to determine their intents, it is very difficult to throw a penalty. If there was defined verbage about what ramming was, the teams would know how far they could go, and how far is crossing the line.