A "Dangerous Situation"

Competition Rules/Strategy
1

So, this weekend at MSC we were up against 67’s full court shooter in quarter finals. We had built a deployable blocker prior to the event for defending such a robot, and used it to some effect.

In our first match against them, we got pushed away by 2337’s very powerful drivetrain (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1AOQ4yTD-k&list=PL6fCSvDccI_76f2Ov2aeZbYOGB3Kd9wHV). I talked to our drivers, and suggested they try to maneuver themselves between 67 and 2337 in order to stand a chance; and told them to ask the head ref what would be called if we were pushed by 2337 into 67, simply as a precaution.

I was pretty shocked to hear that we were told that putting ourselves between 67 and 2337 would be considered ‘placing ourselves in a dangerous situation’ and that the ref would have called fouls against us for this action.

Is this ruling reasonable? From my perspective, if an opposing alliance member pushes us into another opponent in a protected zone, that’s their problem, not ours. Just as a team doesn’t receive a foul for being rammed into a pyramid, they shouldn’t receive one for being forced into a protected bot.

It was a little upsetting to hear this after getting knocked out (since getting in between the FCS and its body guard could have turned the match in our favor), but this ruling would also have a big impact on our defensive strategies at champs.

2

See rule G30. (Emphasis mine)

G30
Regardless of who initiates the contact, a ROBOT may not contact an opponent ROBOT

A. contacting its PYRAMID or
B. touching the carpet in its LOADING ZONE.

Violation: FOUL. If purposeful or consequential, TECHNICAL FOUL. If an opponent’s CLIMB is affected, each affected opponent ROBOT will be granted credit for a Level 3 CLIMB at the end of the MATCH.

G30 can be both a blessing and a curse…

3

Interesting…

(Disclaimer: I was a referee under Mark Garver (The MSC Head Ref) this season at Waterford, and am not a current member of 2337)

There is quite the logical conundrum here. I am personally of the opinion that putting oneself in the position where committing a foul is a possibility places the burden of the foul on that team (in this situation, your team’s robot); HOWEVER, it is clearly stated in rule G18-1 that

"Strategies aimed solely at forcing the opposing ALLIANCE to violate a rule are not in the spirit of FRC and are not allowed. Rule violations forced in this manner will not result in assessment of a penalty on the target ALLIANCE .

Violation: TECHNICAL FOUL"

With THAT said, Mark and the rest of the Refs at Waterford discussed this very rule in a situation that arose at Hub City involving 1986, 16, and 2848:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spyRub7z1Bw
The action of 16 forced 2848 into the pyramid. Consequential contact with the pyramid is a foul for the team making contact (Here, 2848); however, per rule 18-1, forcing a team into a foul is a rules violation. The conclusion of our discussion was that NO FOULS would be assessed in this situation because we judge that team 16 was pushing 2848 not to try and force a foul, but rather to attempt to move 2848 out of the way so that 1986 might be able to shoot unhindered.

This seems quite similar to the situation you described. Ultimately, though, it is up to the head referee to make that call. I would expect that 2337 forcing your machine into 67’s would not be considered a foul, but if 67 initiated the contact, a foul WOULD be assessed - a technical foul if the contact was deemed “Purposeful or Consequential.” Again, ultimately this is up to the head referee to decide, but there are arguments to both the decision made at MSC and a “no-call” philosophy.

My advice would be to ensure that you clarify this same question with the head referee on your field at championships and adjust accordingly.

(As a side-note, getting in between a FCS defender and the FCS robot is not necessarily match-ending because it simply forces the defender to circle around and push from behind. Yes, there may be a delay, but certainly not match-ending because there is no point at which the team attempting to block can safely “sit” to effectively cause a stalemate)

4

G18-1

Strategies aimed solely at forcing the opposing ALLIANCE to violate a rule are not in the spirit of FRC and are not allowed. Rule violations forced in this manner will not result in assessment of a penalty on the target ALLIANCE .

Violation: TECHNICAL FOUL

Sorry, should have included this reference in my post. I see no other purpose for pushing an opponent into a protected team member other than forcing a penalty.

5

Thanks for your insightful input :slight_smile:

We do intend to abide by the head refs ruling, but I wanted to get some community input, since its an interesting question to raise, and may raise some awareness. Our team still enjoyed our matches, and I’m not too hung up on what could have been, since its not productive; my ultimate goal is to find talking points for a more favorable ruling in the future (or to be given solid reasoning why the ruling was ok).

6

Definitely a blessing and curse! We (4080) had it work out quite well for us in our quarter finals matches. It was the end of the match and we were on the way over to the pyramid when we got blocked by 1414. Our drive train was able to push them across the field and we got all the way over to the pyramid and actually made them hit the pyramid. It was decided that we were trying to “continue with the flow of the game” and not “intentional.” We then climbed and 144 made the mistake of trying to navigate out of the pyramid while we were 10 pt climbing and we received the 30 points while won us the match. In that situation it was a blessing, but it can definitely be a curse if you are on the wrong end…

7

Seems to me the FCS protector (2337) should be trying to push a defender (2474) away from the FCS (67), not toward them. I can’t think of any reason 2337 would want to push 2474 CLOSER to 67 other than to draw the foul, and thus, I would call 2337 pushing 2474 into 67 as a G18-1 violation.

8

At Buckeye a couple of teams faced with this conundrum in defending full court shooters found an alternative defense. They pushed the “clearing the defense” robot back into the full court shooter. The clearing robot was not in the protected zone and so no fouls were called. We played a match with 1629 in which 1551 was trying to clear the defense and the defenders ended up creating a traffic jam that kept 1629 from getting many clear full court shots.

9

If there was no protected zone, there would be no reason for 2337 to push 2474 into 67, so I see that as a G 18-1 violation on 2337, not a G 30 on 2474.

10

We faced this exact situation in Central Washington as the FCS:
We were sitting in teh protected zone and a defender was attempting to block us. Our ally shoved the defender into us, resulting in a G18-1 technical. The explanation was simple: There was no reason to shove the defender into the FCS other than to draw a foul… Also in that match, the defender got a bit too close for us and as we moved about a little, getting lined up, etc., we made contact. In this situation, the defender was called for a G20 foul as it had placed itself in a dangerous situation by being so close to us while we were in the protected zone… Later, our ally tried to come around the back to push the defender away. In the process of pushing back, the defender managed to slide into us (in the protected zone). This was called as a violation of G20…

There are all sorts of ambiguities with G18-1, G20 and G30 and the head referees at different events have called them very differently. One of our mentors will be refereeing in St. Louis (not in our division) and has promised to bring the issues up at their referee meetings before the event starts in hopes that it will be called consisently throughout the weekend on all fields. We will also be asking the head ref about it before play starts Thursday afternoon.

11

If 2474 had a shot at pushing 2337, I’m sure this would have been their preferred strategy. But nobody I saw stood a chance at winning a pushing match against 2337. Kudos goes to whoever designed the 2337 drivetrain.

12

If 2474 would have gotten between us and 2337, we would have had 2337 circle around the pyramid and push them away from us… or make some attempt to clear the space for our full court shooting.

I can’t imagine any scenario where we (alliance #1) would have tried to induce a penalty on 2474 by pushing them into us. The strength of our machine is once it setup, we don’t have to move it to continue making shot after shot. If we were bumped, that would only cause us to have to reposition the robot, thus slowing down our scoring with the hopes that the refs would see it and call some type of penalty (pretty unlikely it would be a worthwhile call for us).

In once of the matches, I think F2, 217 did get inbetween us and 2337, and ended up bumping us. They got a 3pt penalty, we asked the Head Ref if that should have been a Tech fouls…and we were told 2337 pushed 217 into us, and if any Techs were called it would have been on 2337 for a G18-1.

So that seems counter to what 2474 was told. My guess is that the Head Ref’s scenario for his discussions with 2474 were based on the assumption that 2337 was already in position and 2474 was trying to squeeze into the space between us and 2337. Then they would be putting themselves into a dangerous position of trying to block our shots and/or potentially bumping into us in the protected zone.

Unfortunately, there are just way too many scenarios and interpretations of scenarios for the head refs to give a for sure way they will call a penalty, before they actually see how it plays out on the field.

13

That seems like a pretty reasonable conclusion, given what you said was called later; I don’t know what words were traded on the field but their is plenty of room for misinterpreting/describing the scenario we were asking about.

The answer we got back changed the way we played qf1-2, since racking up tech-fouls would be no way to win a match, hopefully we can get a better understanding at CMP, I’m happy that it sounds like this is already on the radar.

We had a great time regardless, and I hope we gave you a run for your money :slight_smile:

14

I agree. I’d love to be able to know exactly what we and the defense can and can’t do, then we can develop our strategy based on those rulings.

Yes you did! I was suprised how many shots you guys were able to block with just a little pole. It was more than I would have hoped.

You guys have a good machine. Your autonomous ability had you very high on our list. Had we declined 2054, we suspected you would be our first selection from the 3 or 4 spot, depending on the other picks.

15

The specific 217 move Adam mentions. You can see that we actually do bump 217 slightly into 67 when trying to beat them into the front position, which knocks 67 slightly out of position for shooting. It’s zero benefit to us to knock them into 67, as Adam said, and we would likely get a G18-1 ourselves.

This interaction seems like the most similar situation to what Joe S. was describing. Also agreeing with what Adam said, in this situation the best solution would have been to move 2474 out of the way by driving around them, like we attempted to do before 217 left.

This season in Michigan, I’ve seen it ruled as Jared described, or with a 3-point penalty handed to the intruding robot (217 and 2474 here). I have not seen many G18-1’s being assessed, possibly as part as a product of the district system. Playing with the same teams over and over (although we hadn’t seen 2474 or 2054 yet, we had played at a competition with 67, 217, 469, and 3539 already this season once) and the relationships that are created with that create an friendly, respectful atmosphere, I find.

16

Something that came up in discussions about the situation I described in the original post was that any contact between robots attempting to dislodge a defender from their position would NOT be in violation of rule 18-1 - My interpretation of 18-1 is, for example: Given a blue robot at/near the blue pyramid, a red robot slams into the blue robot and shoves blue-bot across the field INTO the Red Pyramid. This is quite obviously intentional and deserving of a technical foul.

I think that Rule 18-1 has been (in Michigan) considered violated only in such glaringly obvious cases such as this - I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it called at either of the events I volunteered at (one of which where I was a referee) or at the third and fourth where I was merely a spectator. It seems to me to be a more “Spirit of the Game” rule rather than a rule prohibiting incidental/unintentional contact that might occur during the fast, brief collisions incurred during an intense FRC match.

17

I disagree. If the offensive defender is capable of loading frisbees into their robot then they can argue correctly that they decided to head for the loading zone to obtain frisbees. They could even claim that they purposely pushed the defender into their alliance member while attempting to get to the loading zone. In this case their strategy is no longer “aimed solely” at forcing the opposing alliance to violate a rule.

There is no rule stating that you must avoid another robot to get to your desired location on the field. As soon as they get between you and your alliance partner your strategy changes because you can no longer push them away.

It’s that “aimed solely” wording along with a harsh penalty that seems to make the difference here. As long as you are attempting to play some other aspect of the game, your strategy is no longer aimed solely at forcing penalties.

18

This is one of the problems of having to rewrite the rules every season. The law of untended consequences come up. Everybody, referees included, has a slightly different interpretation of the rules. The best you can hope for is at any given event, the referees are consistent.

Just reading G18-1, I would think that it would only be called when intent to cause a foul is the only reasonable interpretation of the action. So pushing a robot into a protected member while trying to get them out of the way of another robot shooting should not be a foul under this rule.

19

I don’t disagree with your interpretation entirely, but I feel even the situation described above can be given enough credible reason to avoid the 18-1 penalty; a robot pushing another robot into a pyramid can easily be justified as a defensive pinning maneuver.

Personally, my feeling is that 18-1 is too severe and narrow to accomplish its goal (as I interpret it). Attempting to assign a technical foul based on intent of an action is far too difficult to judge accurately enough to enforce the rule by assigning technical fouls.

As written, a forced rule violation that would receive a technical foul creates a 40pt swing in the match based on the referee’s ruling. There is no middle ground where Red forced Blue to violate a rule with motives beyond generating foul points; in this case, even though the penalty was forced upon blue, they are still penalized despite their inability to avoid it (by the letter of the rules).

I feel like the intent of G18-1 would be better stated as follows:
"Strategies that result in forcing the opposing ALLIANCE to violate a rule are not in the spirit of the game, rule violations forced in this manner will not result in assessment of a penalty on the target ALLIANCE.

Violation: Technical Foul if the sole intent of the strategy was to force a rules violation"

Add a blue box on G30 stating “With respect to G18-1, G30 will supersede, except in cases where the violating ROBOT is prevented from escaping contact (for example, a second opposing robot holding them in place or pushing them into contact).”

Maybe I’m reading too much between the lines, but the intent of the rules seems to be to prevent people from being penalized unavoidably, but not to give them a protective bubble.

20

So would a strategy to force the other alliance into a G18-1 would be in fact a violation of G18-1 in itself? :ahh: How deep into this rabbit hole do we want to go?