Egregious behaviour leading to a card escalation, thus a match DQ (red card) (page 49/50 in the manual)
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FRC has always been a lot closer to sportscar or racing than traditional sports, including how the rules are interpreted. Rules are strict, and breaking rules comes with plenty of consequences.
You’ll also find that most FRC teams are fairly risk-averse until it becomes necessary to take risks. Taking a massive risk every time you climb that you could get a red card is not something that will ever be picked in alliance selection.
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This is something I have thought about for a while. In short, I think this is the one area where the “spirit of the rules” does apply: if the rules were created to be prescriptive, or define the game (like in FIRST or chess), then they should be strictly enforced and followed. However, if the rules were written to describe a game already being played (like football or basketball), then you can add some tolerance for referee error.
In American football, for example, you have rules with more room for interpretation that were created to describe how the game is played (or close loopholes/chokeholds). The mentality is more akin to “well, the rules don’t ban x, so it must be legal”.
However, in FRC, because the rules define the game and how it is played, there is an authoritative interpretation of the rules for every situation. So, the rules must be effective, enforceable, and clear. This is why FRC has a Q&A: to give teams the right interpretation of the rules.
So, in my opinion, unless FIRST wants to copy another sport’s rulebook, I’m fine with the perscriptive games we have.
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Any referee who has read Q59 and sees the reference for a potential G211 call may evaluate that much more closely.
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Something I was thinking about…
There are a few things to consider. NASCAR, I think it was, had a guy who was a notorious rule-tester. Literally, would find any loophole. Said loophole would close immediately. FRC often operates similarly.
Are you bold enough to create the next “Raul Rule”? Because, if you do this, I 100% guarantee that even if you “get away with it”, the very next Team Update will make such a change that nobody will be able to do that again, inlcuding you. And that rule, or a derivative, will be permanent.
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Echoing this.
The general culture seems to go for consistency first. Basically the time to take risks is when you have your back against the wall. Sometimes this pays of big time (the instances you know about) but there are a lot of times where it is a crash and burn, which generally do not get remembered.
A lot of strategy rules and “loopholes” are saved for when they are needed. Now this climb is more design based, so a little different, but still… Chose when to burn your capital wisely.
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I believe a key point here is that we recognize this application of the rule poses an immediate major foul, which is why we raised the question in the first place. The response provided through the Q&A system leaves room for each event to be interpreted and ruled differently. Instead of updating the rules to address this directly - they could include language indicating that repeated instances of action G406 could result in a yellow card or something similar.
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That’s most likely to land in G211’s Blue Box, to be honest, as an example. That’s what they initially did for the Processor Hoarding strategy.
This is why we entered Q59 originally. If FIRST was to update the rules with “repeated violations will result in Yellow Card”, we’d totally get it.
It’s odd to us that they did not create such an escalation of penalties. The rule remains only a Major Foul, without any such escalation built it. We questioned whether to even quote G211 in our question, and even then, FIRST’s response has some ambiguity.
FWIW, when I coached FLL, we always had the kids look for “loopholes”. We coached them then it’s not just about what the rules say, but about what they don’t say. One year, they found a nuance in the definition of ROBOT and the wording of a challenge, and found a way to make the challenge much easier. They needed to defend it to the referee, but they did so, and points were award in their favor. It’s in the same spirit that this year’s FRC team has been reading the 2025 Rules.
From my perspective, if FIRST wanted to clearly close this “loophole”, they could. But they did not, leaving some ambiguity.
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When I’m working on a pick list, teams with an increased likelihood of yellow and red cards are almost always placed on the “Do Not Pick” list.
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What do you mean? G211 is exactly that escalation of penalties.
(emphasis is mine below)
Egregious behavior beyond what is listed in the rules or subsequent violations of any rule or procedure during the event is prohibited.
And GDC Admin cited that fact in their answer to Q59 (emphasis mine again):
Deliberately using a SCORING ELEMENT in violation of G406 in order to gain BARGE points and achieve an RP may be considered egregious per G211, particularly if repeated during the event.
They don’t copy/paste G211 into every single rule in order for the escalation to be possible for every rule. Instead they literally wrote “subsequent violations of any rule” into G211. I don’t think there’s much room to hold the belief that escalations, if they happen for subsequent violations, are not provided for in the rules.
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I think the escalation of penalties is intended to give the benefit of the doubt to teams, but the goal is to prevent teams from intentionally breaking any rule in order to gain an advantage.
But more to the point, how on earth do you propose to get your robot into this position? Enquiring minds want to know!
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Before I read the rule, I had been thinking of holding a coral as if it was over a human forearm and then “plank” on that coral-encased forearm and the other end holding the deep cage.
That could be done by an algae specialist bot as a preloaded coral if you wanted.
Then I read the manual and…
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What’s interesting about the Q59 response is that the definition of “repeated” usually is interpreted as “repeated in the same match” unless otherwise specified (like G408). So it’s not clear that every ref will interpret “repeated” the same way for G406 in the context of Q59.
Getting a coral into this position without violating bumper zone rules (G414 et al) is a feat. This has been interpreted in the past to mean that a mechanism generally can’t push down into the floor such that it would intentionally lift the bumpers out of the bumper zone as part of normal game play. Incidental acts (e.g. intake arms gone haywire in 1 match) don’t typically get called for G414.
I could definitely see this scenario being made illegal just by adding an innocent-looking word or two to one rule or another. So I wouldn’t bet my season on the design.
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Is it ethical for mentors to be teaching kids how to work around the rules?
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That’s clearly a catch. Total control of the cage with no knee or elbow on the field, no bobbling, two toes down.
I wish to provide an additional perspective as to why this is a such a slippery slope.
Purely Hypothetical Scenario that most certainly falls within the realm of possibility
Imagine it’s the Tuesday before your first district event. You pull up the Reefscape Game Manual on firstinspires.org, and the newest Team Update includes an updated G406 with “Violation: MAJOR FOUL, if strategic YELLOW CARD”. Now, not only does the Head Ref have a path to escalate repeated violations of G406 by invoking G211 but now, if the Head Ref feels that the first occurrence was definitively intentional then, they will issue you a yellow card right then.
*I would also like to point out that we are only at the start of Week 2 in the Build Season and the GDC/FIRST HQ has already demonstrated that they are more than willing to make any sort of changes to the rules that they feel are appropriate in order to preserve the spirit of the program AND this year’s game by already adding an entire rule about how many ALGEA can be stored in the processor area, preventing the whole “purposefully not doing anything with it thereby limiting the amount of points that can come from them”, and even if there doesn’t end up being a Team Update like this G211 still very much exists and is always an option for a Head Ref.
Now, if you’re team has implemented the strategy that you are describing in the very design of your robot then that will essentially mean that you have wasted an entire build season creating a robot that ends up doing more harm than good, and the more your design relies upon this strategy the worse it will be (like, potentially a complete redesign/rebuilding of the robot).
From the stories that I’ve read here on CD from teams that have experienced scenarios similar to this, it is not very pleasant.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
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The last time I can actually remember a loophole robot not immediately being nullified by refs or rule updates, was 2010 with the redirector/feedback loop soccer bot.
Guys, it doesn’t work, it’s not going to work. FRC isn’t a video game where you can find a bug and then exploit it. There are smart humans watching these matches and they will enforce the spirit of the rules if the rules as written fail (or at least aren’t as explicit as we think they should be).
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There are smart humans who think that 118 exploited MOMENTARY control against the spirit of the rules, even though it was (IMO) entirely within the written rules.
Those people are prone to disagreeing with the notion that the spirit of the rules is enforced and the game manual discourages assuming an unwritten spirit (no doubt in part because of the wide spread of possible conjured spirit of the rules).
This one doesn’t seem like enforcement going outside the written rules is required. You can get a single qual match advantage here. It’s fine; building an entire major part of your robot to get a six point (and maybe 1 RP) advantage in one (maybe two?) qual match doesn’t seem like a wise use of resources to me.
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I think sometimes it gets lost that the people we build as mentors are more important than the robots we build or the matches we win.
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