We just attended the Chesapeake regional and it came to mind that while an alliance is assesed penalties that affect the score, is there a statistic for individual team penalties.
I tried to scout with that stat but couldn’t find it unless I just asked the teams.
For example, 2199 was penalty free for 8 matches made 7 -8 laps per match, and could effectively knock balls of the overhead. Unfortunately lots of teams could lap and knock the ball off. We tried to press the fact that we were penalty free but I think if that stat was available overall it would influence alliance picks.
This has been a penalty ridden game and I think a large percentage of matches were determined by penalty. I have no regrets and I’m very proud of what our team accomplished this year, but if I were a team going to the championships I would definitely like to have this statistic, especially considering how many teams I’d have to scout to get it.
I heard them say the teams a few times while watching SVR. I am not sure if they announce the teams penalties. The best thing to do would be to know the rules and get someone to watch for flags and what team they point at.
The announcing was outstanding at Chessie. The penalties were ascribed to the team incurring them and described to help the fans understand but would it be really hard to add a column to the standings board with a running total of penalties incurred. Think how that would change alliance selections!
My experience at the San Diego Regional was no elaboration of the penalty was made by the game announcer in the majority of the matches, i.e. “20 pts against the red alliance”.
In some cases the infraction was cited, i.e. “contact outside the bumper zone”, but I don’t recall the team number ever being called out by the announcer in any of the penalties (except for yellow card citations). Sometimes, the teams themselves had to ask what penalties were assessed in their match.
Hm I don’t know if that would help so much. I mean if you’re scouts are doing their jobs they can tell you which teams get penalties and which didn’t. And if you think you should pick them they were doing something right.
If the scoring system works the way I think it does, it would be a significant amount of work to create this, penalties are currently not entered into the computer by team, in fact no data is. Everything is entered by alliances (penalties and scores) and the computer does the legwork of determining QS, RS and MP of each team.
One issue you could run into is that sometimes a team isn’t the one responsible for the penalty. I remember two years ago, my team was called for having 3 teams playing defense (when you could only have two) because we were the last team to cross the line. Before the match, however, we decided that a different team would be the ‘back bot’ so the penalty was due to thier mistake, not ours.
I think it is better to have the scout watching that team to understand all the rules and be able to recognize what they did to recieve the penalty.
At the end of the match, the penalties were usually announced and which team received them. Our scouts kept track of this and it greatly influenced our alliance selections at NJ. For example, some teams were very fast and could get many laps, but would get called for high-speed ramming, a 10-pt. penalty that negates 5 laps.
At the Florida Regional most penalties were announced after the match along wiht who did them. But you really shouldn’t need them to. I did a good bit of scouting and you can usually tell when a robot your watching gets a penalty. Keep one eye on the robot and one eye on the refs and your pretty much set
I think this would be a very good idea. Someone at the scoring table would have to fill in a spreadsheet listing Match Number, Team Number, and Rule Number. The spreadsheet could be displayed on a screen in the pit area.
All too often, the penalty announcements are not specific enough. “The Red Alliance earned 20 points in penalties for ‘breaking the plane’.” OK, but which team(s). Or, “There were 3 penalties on the Red Alliance, two for Team X and one for Team Y.”
as a team we tried to keep scouting data on penalties incurred and it definitely played a role in our alliance selection because of the large weight of penalties ad there more often than not decision on the outcome of a given match
The refs don’t announce which team out ofthe alliance individually gets what penalties, but they do keep track. I saw the sheet at our regional where they had written down how many penalties each team got over the course of hte weekend. Surprisingly enough, there were some teams with no penalties, but at the other end there were teams with 6-7 penalties. The refs aren’t allowed to give out this information to teams for various reasons.
I found out about it after the competition was over.
That doesnt make sense. I know that the announcers at the regionals I’ve been to keep saying that the ref’s like having no penalties. If the teams don’t know the penalties they incurred, how can the drivers improve to stop getting them? That seems couterproductive to me.
