I searched around and didn’t find this on a thread this year, so I am bringing this question to the 2005 game. Most people saw the instance where a team capped another last year with the big Yellow ball when the other team had alot of purple balls in their ball catching mechanism. I was wondering if it was legal to cap another team. Say a team had multiple tetras and was going towards a goal, and instead of waiting for them to put the many tetras on the goal, you just put your color on top of them. This may be a good strategy because it would put your tetra on top, some teams have a max they can carry or cap and putting an extra one on top may go over this limit. I don’t know if its worth it all the time, but it might be a worthwhile strategy. If anyone has an answer that would be great. Thanks
Nate
Is it legal? Yes. Is Graciously Professional? No. Is it smart? Yes
That is kinda one of dlavery’s quotes, i tweeked it a bit though.
I think there was an instance where either we or Rolling Thunder attempted to cap East but I don’t think it was sucessful.
If your robot is good enough to cap a moving robot, would it not be that much better at capping a goal that is obviously stationary. How often would a robot be sitting still while you are capping a tetra in their possession? Probably only when in the loading zone - and we already know you will get a 30 point penalty for touching them while loading.
What I am talking about is if you were capping a team that usually waits until the end to put the tetras on ( leaving not enough time to cap the goal they just capped?, so wouldn’t it be smart to cap them?.. Teams that I have seen with over 3 tetras have been considerably slow with that many tetras, slow enough to cap them.
what about capping a robot’s arm at a joint, and keeping them from moving their arm??
I would not say that capping a team per se is graciously unprofessional; its just another example of a really unique (whether or not it proves to be usable) strategy. The same could be said if someone spent the whole match locking you in one corner.
I wasn’t sure if thats what was meant, but hey, just to throw it out there.
That would be very unGP. It might seem smart but think about it, that might cause damage to their robot; the robot they built for the past 6 weeks. Capping a robot is fine and will be a crowd pleaser, but intentionally capping an arm joint, or jamming a tetra into a robot will be very very wrong. 
From this thread:
There’s a video around here somewhere of team 93 getting their giant ball dump capped. It wasn’t illegal, and I didn’t hear anybody say it wasn’t graciously professional. Defense is part of the game.
Thanks for telling the Team Number I was lost trying to remember that #. I don’t think there is a rule this year about it either, if there is one please refer me to it.
I think it would be a great move in the right conditions. However, be cautious - bouncy yellow balls are much less damaging than pointy, 8.5lb tetras. If something on the receiving robot breaks, both teams will pay the price in some way.
AFAIK, there is no rule against it.
I think capping a stack of tetras would be not fall under unGP unless you did knowing that it would break their lifter. If you have a reasonable expectation that doing this will break them, then it’s very unGP. I would be surprised if this strategy happened very often though.
Legal yes and what does GP have to do with it? This is a competition and there is no rule against it so it is legal. Therefore it has nothing to do with GP. I would also have to question whether capping a team while in the loading zone is or is not legal. If you drop a tetra and are not touching the tetra or other robot then you have also not broken any rules. The rule states that if you are touching a tetra and it comes in contact then it is a penalty as the tetra is an extension of your robot.
I could be wrong and if so please post the correct ruling.
We were capped last year and as a driver/competitor I was mad, but I did not think that it was ungracious of them. I had realized that it was just a good strategy and I just dealt with it. This year if that happens, which i am sure it will, and it causes damage that would probably just be considered normal game play. If someone uses their arm to block someone from placing tetras would that be considered normal game play or would this be ruff housing and would then be penalized?(that is a question from me, gimme some opinions or something that i missed.)
GO 1403!!!
I’ve got another question. If team A caps team B’s robot, can team B’s human player remove the tetra if the robot went to the human loading zone?
I would have to say no, I don’t think Humans can decap other team alliance tetras from their robot. And it would take alot of time.
No, as long as you don’t entangle with the robot, or decap the tetra
Just be prepared to face not only the teams wraith but also the reprecussions from the refs if you damage said robot
personaly i think i driver/coach should be able to pecieve all the possible results for their actions and IMO these are just a few of the results that could come of this strategy a) imoblizing the robots arm for the remainder of the match b) the “capped robot” could destroy the tetra and then the capping team could be slaped with a penalty for intentional damaging the field c) the capped robot’s arm is destroyed and guess what you have 3 matches partnered with this robot comming up (not completly impossible) d)capped robots arm is damaged and you get slapped with a penalty for intentionally damaging an opposing alliances robot
just a few things to think about, i am not saying the strategy is an illeagal one just that the bad outwiegh the good
The bad points of this strategy don’t exactly outweigh the good points, as long as you were careful about how you went about it. Maybe this year, you might pay attention to how many tetras a robot could hold.
Say a robot stacked multiple tetras at once. If each time they stacked three tetras before placing them, then why not when they have two, put one of yours on top of their stack. This way you know you won’t hurt their robot, but you still get your desired outcome. Now this doesn’t mean that they can’t stack a fourth and don’t because they are prepared for just such an event.
Overall it is a completely viable tactic which doesn’t really seem ungracious.