We’re pretty sure that a shooter that gouges or cuts pieces out of the ball will be sidelined by this rule against field damage. However, what do you think about leaving streaks or skid marks on the balls? We were excited that we could make the ball move with our prototype, but are wondering about the orange turning to gray then black during a tournament. 
The rule says you can’t destroy it, but I also think the FMS would like it if you dirtied their basketballs. Plus, it adds more variables that could potentially affect the shooting of other teams. As we’ve found out, dirty balls don’t go as far.
Did you mean wouldn’t? And I don’t think the field management system really cares about the balls, is there another meaning for FMS that I don’t know?
Technically, it isn’t damage, but it still might be a bad idea. The question is, do you do it anyways, because it’s not against the rules, technically, or do you change the shooter to avoid that? I, personally, would base it on how effective it is now, compared to if you change it. But either way, it seems fine.
P.S.
That skid-marking shooter might change to a ripping shooter if match or use stress changes it. You should probably be careful.
I was thinking that the more cuts in the thin skin of the ball, the more likely that a reaction wheel will connect a few of them to make longer and longer ones as it tries to accelerate the balls into the 50 or 60 ft/sec range. Surface cuts will make a spinning ball hop around in its flight path as it is. I’m in favor of a catapult myself, but the spinning wheels are too cool to be ignored, I guess. Physics be damned, we’re making it do cool stuff.
Yeah, I meant wouldn’t. I don’t know another meaning for FMS, though I do know at SVR last year they didn’t like it if you popped tubes by accident.
The dirt only came from old wheels, we found out at a later meeting. New wheels work perfectly.
Sweet!
The rule’s blue box says ‘occasional marks’. If your wheel marks every ball it spits out, then expect a violation. Otherwise you will probably (note, not guaranteed) be ok. In selecting a rubber from McMaster that may be the tread for our shooter wheel, I was careful not to choose black. That’s basically the extent of it.
If you have a collection of VEX balls from Clean Sweep laying around they make a reasonable analog for smaller scale testing of wheel surface on a coated foam ball.
Like Jesse, we didn’t notice any significant difference between tread material and marking a ball in our testing. The only ball our prototype “ate” was when there was a missfeed.