I’ve noticed a few times human players will start dumping gears onto the ground from their chute to block up the opposing alliance’s airship, and sadly, it’s working.
Is this really not against any rules? It seems highly against Gracious Professionalism and more like a defensive tactic that’s only legal cause no one’s explicitly called it out in the rulebook.
Edit: H08 gives a red card for doing this, the refs at our regional just didn’t know and we couldn’t find the rule in time.
I’m not sure H08 gives a red card for the action you are describing:
GAME PIECES through LOADING STATIONS only. ALLIANCES may only deliberately cause GAME PIECES to leave an ALLIANCE STATION or LOADING LANE
A. during TELEOP,
B. by a HUMAN PLAYER or DRIVER, and
C. through a LOADING STATION slot.
If the gear was thrown through the loading station, it should be legal.
The easy way to prevent this from happening would be to build a robot that could pick up gears from the floor. Easy points means that’ll stop real quick.
I don’t see how H08 would apply here.
H08 would only apply if they were entering the gears into the field some way other than through the loading station slot. It says nothing about the reason for entering those gears.
This situation brought to mind G21, but unfortunately upon further inspection it only applies to robots moving the game pieces. If the robots don’t touch the gears, this doesn’t apply.
As far as I can tell, this is a completely legal strategy. If your robot can’t handle gears stuck in front of the pegs, that’s your problem, not the refs’.
Why would a legal human player action be not gracious and professional?
Gracious professionalism should be applied to your own actions, not others.
Am I missing something, overanalyzing this, or do people just not know which side of the bread has the butter (like teams who littered before coop totes were stacked in 2015)? It doesn’t make sense.
Assuming that no one on either alliance can pick gears up off the carpet: By dropping one or more gears on the carpet in front of a loading station, a human player renders 1/2 of their loading stations inoperable, and reduces the likely effectiveness of 1/3 of their opponent’s scoring lifts. By putting gear(s) in front of the other loading station, it affects BOTH of their loading stations but still only one of the opponent’s three lifts.
While it is legal, I have trouble seeing the point, as you could easily do the same thing (to a more severe degree) to ALL THREE LIFTS with fuel. While robots on the other alliance could use their intake to clear it (if they have one, even better if they don’t) it would still waste 10-15 seconds per cycle to any robot you do this to.
Human players did this at Granite State during the last few seconds to at least try disrupting climbs.
IMHO if the HP is dropping gears when one of their alliance robots are not there, then it is NOT GP. Especially if none of their robots have floor pick-up and they are still dropping them. Great game strategy - but it goes against the spirit of the game and FRC.
A warning should be the next best step for the team.
Were they successful? …seems to me most climbing bots could probably still reach their rope to climb would be interested to hear if the “gear litter late strategy” actually worked. As for the fuel 10-15 seconds "pollute all three lifts with fuel " seems to me any decent floor intake bot could clear that path in about the same time so seems unlikely to be effective way to go. Probably be better off playing straight defense.
Please use this strategy against us.
This is a violation of rule G21, team 148 on our alliance got called for it during the semifinals at the Dallas regional.
G21. GAME PIECES: use as directed. ROBOTS may not deliberately use GAME PIECES, e.g.
GEARS, in an attempt to ease or amplify the challenge associated with other FIELD elements,
e.g. BOILERS, HOPPERS, or ROPES.
Violation: YELLOW CARD.
Did a robot on the fouled alliance touch any of the gears involved?
If it isn’t explicitly against the rules and it has the potential to benefit your alliance then why wouldn’t you do it? If your human player can reliably throw a Gear through the chute and have it mess with your opponent then by all means do it.
How is this different than a team with no Fuel capacity dumping a Hopper for the soul purpose of getting Fuel in front of the springs, and messing with the opposing team? There are a ton of little things in STEAMWORKS that can influence the outcome of the matches. I really don’t think Gear throwing is the most effective strategy, but it certainly is a legal one, and is by no means unprofessional.
Bingo^^^^ risk a YELLOW card
No, team 148 released fuel from the hopper nearest to the opposing pick up zone, then pushed some of the fuel so that it was blocking the pick up zone. I mentioned rule G21 because I assume it would apply for this as well.
You do bring in a great point about the fuel, as it was a strategy well played on the Lake Superior side of Duluth (as some of the robots became hung-up on the fuel balls). However, no one stated anything about unprofessional - but there is a distinct difference in FRC games when it comes to GRACIOUS PROFESSIONALISM.
That being stated, if an alliance has NO robots that can gear intake from the floor, then it is still not GP. If the alliance does not have a a single fuel intake yet then it could be still be construed as un-GP. As for dumping fuel to deprive a team/alliance from gaining a hopper, then it could be construed as ‘game piece deprivation’ - a tried and true past practice of FRC that has been allowed in previous years.
Again, my opinion.
If a robot was involved, then that’s a reasonable assumption.
If no robot is involved, then it’s a bit murkier, and worth bringing up at your drivers’ meeting.
As far as GP and strategies: There are very few cases where a legal strategy is either ungracious or unprofessional or both–and those tend to be stuff like not doing what you said you’d do (either within the alliance strategy or when cooperating with an opponent).
It’s game strategy. If it’s against GP, it’s against the rules (ie attempting to disable/break robots). If it’s not against the rules, it’s probably a valid strategy. It’s a competition. Alliances compete against each other and disrupt each other’s robots. That’s not gracious, but it’s part of the game.
There’s a lot going on in this thread.
The rules are a bit murky. The closest rule specifically calls out robots rather than human players.
Pointing out both ramps are blocked is not as useful during the period being discussed. During the climb period, the acting team won’t care their chutes are blocked. Why not? They’re risking 50pt penalties just by being in the area and are disabling their ability to climb for 50pts.
Comparing balls to gears is a bit odd. Let’s assume they’re able to be pushed around equally. You’re allowed to move multiple balls at once. Moving two gears at once would be a yellow card here (and really in most instances). If the handling of two gears at once is strategic, it’s a yellow card. Also, the ball defense really did just about nothing. The only way I can see the gear defense providing any value is creating potential for the foul.
But, it’s a bit silly to focus so much on the idea of “it’s not explicitly against the rules so therefore it’s professional.” This is narrow minded, to say the least. That’s why there are catch all rules in place. If you’d like to see why I say this, try to put together a game with rules. Give it to thousands of teams. See how many loopholes they find. Some of their ideas will be strategic and in line with the spirit of the game. Some will be outside of the spirit of the game while still being strategic. You cannot easily claim “it’s not against the rules so it’s not against GP.” The two aren’t synonymous. In fact, GP is intentionally left undefined so that we don’t get into the game of trying to find things that aren’t literal violations of the definition. You’re missing the entire spirit of GP when you make these actions. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong. But, it means you’re reaching conclusions without understanding GP entirely.
I think I like the idea that it wasn’t very gracious. But, it’s a bit loose to suggest it wasn’t professional. I’d also be very curious as to what impact, if any, it had on anyone other than field reset. Watching an event from start to finish, I’ve seen a wide range of hopper strategies. I’ve never see balls be the reason a team had issues with a climb. I’d want to see somewhere gears actually provided more than an emotional benefit to those dropping the gears.