I wanted to start a conversation about rule G418 in this year’s game:
G418: “In TELEOP, a ROBOT may not contact an opponent’s CAGE.” Violation: Major Foul (6 points) and opposing ALLIANCE is awarded the BARGE RP if a Qualification MATCH
The way this rule is structured raises a potential concern for match strategy and fairness. Here’s an example scenario:
Let’s say a team can execute a deep cage climb, but only when the chain is stable. An opposing team could intentionally hit the cage at full speed during the last 30 seconds, making it impossible for that team to complete their climb. The result? The offending team incurs a Major Foul, giving 6 points to the opposing alliance. However, by preventing the deep cage, which is worth 12 points, they create a net gain of 6 points for their own alliance.
This could swing a match in favor of the offending alliance—even though they conceded the opposing team a bonus ranking point (Barge RP).
Do you think this creates a loophole that encourages intentional rule-breaking for strategic gain? Should the penalty be adjusted to discourage this kind of behavior? I’d love to hear whether anyone else sees this as a potential issue.
We noticed this yesterday as well. In the past, interfering with a climb resulted in a free ‘max level’ climb or enough tech fouls, so there isn’t any incentive to mess with an opponent’s climb. This is one I’d expect FIRST to update to be two Major Fouls opposed to just one.
I agree that there is room for abuse, but teams that tend to do so get a bad reputation, and could land a G211 yellow card.
On the upside, the robot that can no longer climb has all the time they usually budget for climbing to score more coral or algae, and do a quick park at the end. Could end up ahead and still have the free RP.
I agree, they’re likely to amend this fairly quickly. I suspect they’ll revise not G418, but G428: “CAGE protection. A ROBOT may not contact, directly or transitively through a SCORING ELEMENT, an opponent ROBOT in contact with an opponent CAGE during the last 20 seconds regardless of who initiates contact.” The violation will get changed from “MAJOR FOUL and the opponent ALLIANCE is awarded the BARGE RP” to “MAJOR FOUL and the opponent is awarded the point value for climbing the involved CAGE and the BARGE RP.”
Another aspect of this is you can draw the penalty for contacting an opponent’s CAGE at the beginning of teleop, where there’s really no harm done. The students will figure this out, but one possible way this plays out is the opponent’s BARGE ZONE effectively becomes off-limits for the entirety of teleop. It may also mean playing defense in this part of the field is probably going to be pretty risky.