I’d like teams thoughts on pushing other teams into the retrieval zone. I’ve seen a bunch of occasions where teams were very close and got nudged in. But what about being pushed from the neutral zone and being herded into it?
We avoid the corner, but it’s pretty difficult to stay out of that whole lane. We got called on entering the opposing alliance retrieval zone. How far is too far to push another robot, or is it just the price of having a mecanum drive train?
Here’s a video. We come from behind our airship then get pushed into the zone. At one point the opposing teams drives around and pushes from the side to push us deeper in. Curious to hear opinions on this…
We were pushed from the other side of the airship into the retrieval zone in one match, and were penalized for it. YMMV depending on the refs at your specific event, but I think this is just something you have to be prepared for. I think it’s a lousy rule, but it is what it is.
If they push you in with the intent that you will get penalized for it, it breaks the game rule that says they can’t try to make opponents break rules (I don’t feel like checking which rule in the manual right now). But from the one event we went to it seemed easy enough to steer far enough clear of the zone that only non-incidental, intentional pushing could happen.
I believe this was the correct call based on the intent of the rule. The robot does not attempt to be pushing you just to get the foul points they appear to be heading to the loading zone to get a gear. That being said that is by far the furthest I have seen someone pushed in the zone to get a foul. The mec wheels make it a little too easy to push around and I would say your drivers will just have to be careful/evasive on that side of the airship.
FWIW, at both events I’ve been to this was being called regardless of intent. Intent is a difficult/impossible thing to prove one way or another, anyway.
C08 (don’t force opponent to violate rule) and intent are hard because …
With zone Ref’s, the Ref watching the Retrieval Zone may not notice the result (robot contact in Retrieval zone) until it happens, and not see what happened to cause the foul (robot pushed from other side of field).
I suppose the real solution is: If you are near the Retrieval Zone, be careful (just like being near the Opposing Alliance’s Ropes during final 30 seconds). If you are not near the Retrieval zone, make sure you have a drive train that makes your robot hard to be pushed around.
The real reason that it’s hard is what the text of C08 actually says:
Emphasis added. They weren’t (from what I can see from that bad video) soley trying to push you into the retrieval zone - they were trying to play the game and get a gear. which they’re totally entitled to do.
I’ll reserve my personal opinions of this rule, however it was called as written.
IMO a great idea is if you are not the color of the retrieval zone and near enough to it, you better have a solid ability to not be pushed into it by the other alliance heading toward their retrieval zone or to play peg defense both likely reasons for them to “use that gameplay action” which *may *push you into their retrieval zone.
The smartest teams I’ve seen in action play defense on the neutral zone side of that line, to stay far away from the retrieval zone potential tech foul and are hard to push. One of the first things I told our team is stay away from that area when the other alliance is nearby , as its the ONLY safe zone on the field (and to make sure their partners knew that also)
This is one of the main reasons we stayed away from mec wheels. As a gear runner if there is someone between us and the retrieval zone we are going to try to go through them if possible around if we have to. if you have mec wheels, more than likely your going into the zone with us…
Intent of contact in the retrieval zone only matters insofar as forcing the penalty is the [b]only reason for making the contact. If you’re in the way of a bot trying to get a gear - sure, they can push you in and force a foul. Yet that isn’t their sole strategy, since they’re really there to get a gear.
Believe me, they’d love for you to get out of their way, and really prefer that you weren’t there at all. Forcing a tech foul is your incentive to stay out of the way.
At SVR there was one match where 2 of the 3 opposing robots took turns pushing us in to their retrieval zone. One robot on each exposed side just pinning us into the corner, backing up about 6 inches every few seconds, and then pushing us back in. Totaled up to 75 foul points for them and we lost because of it.
If I remember right, one of our matches at WPI, I think it was the quarterfinals, one of our aliiance bots died in the other retrieval zone. The other alliance kept hitting them, eventually pushing them out. Then the other alliance pushed them back into the zone. So instead of 200+ penalty points, the other alliance only got 100 and a yellow card.
Personally think it should be if you are not trying to go in it, it shouldn’t be called. But with judgement calls, everyone judges it differently. The only way to make a perfect game is to eliminate all judgement calls.
We were pushed into the retrieval zone this weekend and it broke our no-penalties streak we had enjoyed all season. About a minute later our driver pushed that same robot into our retrieval zone so that he could “retrieve” those foul points. Worked well.
I think one of the problems with this foul is that it leaves no room for teams who have no intention of going into the retrieval zone. As has already been stated intent is impossible to prove because the refs have no idea what the team behind the glass is really trying to do. so you can’t prove that one team was trying to push another into the retrieval zone and you can’t prove whether the other team was trying to get out of the way or was trying to play defense and just did a poor job of it.
IMHO the only way that this could be handled with some degree of fairness is if the referees were watching this zone and the surrounding area full time and made a judgment call on whether or not the team that was pushed into the zone was making an actual effort to get out of the way, or had no possibility of getting out of the way.
Again the problem here is that, because its a judgment call, every referee would have a different opinion on what constituted trying to get out of the way or what would be considered having no possibility to get out of the way.
And not to beat a semi-dead horse here but I think that this is where video replay could come in handy, to be used solely at the discretion of the referees. They could come together and look at the replay and come to a consensus on whether or not they think a foul should be assessed.
The other suggestion that I had for this is that if in the opinion of the referee being in the retrieval zone wasn’t deliberate then it would only be a regular 5 point foul instead of the 25 point tech foul. This way you still discourage deliberate incursions into the retrieval zone for strategic purposes. On the other side the alliance that is have their way blocked still gets a penalty and gets some benefit, without doing too much harm to the alliance they didn’t have any choice/intent.
In one of our qualifications we actually lost comms right by the retrieval zone, a robot on the opposing alliance kept pushing us in and they got 100 points worth of fouls off of that.
2022 was near the retrieval zone, got pushed in, had a RoboRio reboot (20-30 seconds of being dead). Every time a robot from the other alliance got near, they touched 2022’s robot on their way to get a gear and racked up 175 foul points.
Every single FIM referee that we have had had clarified that the penalty applies regardless of the intent of the robot, so hypothetically if we were shoved by two robots across the entire field into the loading zone we would receive a foul (Not that that is a valid strategy, just clarifying)
As it is the tech foul points are too good to pass up honestly, if the foul was only 5 points I can safely say that less of these fouls would get called, but as a driver its my job to make sure we win matches, and as much as I hate to say it, its dumb not to take a free 25 points when you can get it. Then again, if our mecanum drive is shoving you anywhere you are probably doing something wrong
I’d like to see the rule changed to a 5 point penalty with an additional 5 point penalty every 3 seconds you remain within the zone, with the possibility of a card if it is repeated often and with intent.
We asked the referee after the drivers meeting how do they decide if it is a penalty to the “pusher” or the “being pushed”…
and the answer was that if the “pusher” has a gear on the robot, then they are intentionally trying to get the opposing alliance to get a foul…
if there is no gear on the “pusher” and they are pushing an other bot, then that other bot is considered “in the way” and will get the 25 pts penalty…
Bottom line, do not try to play defense on your side of the side unless you are sure that an opposing bot would not be able to push you in that loading zone…