Currently I’m at a practice competition and we keep getting penalized. We know you can’tgo backwards over a line, but we turn 180 degrees and drive backwards without crossing a line. We get penalized for this, but nothing in the rules says we can’t do this, at least to our knowledge. Any help with this would be appreciated.
You are right. I think.
Here is what I think you are saying: “We are going backwards (clockwise) without crossing a line and getting penalized for it.” If so, you are correct and the refs need to read the rulebook and the Q&A. However, if you are breaking the plane of the line, then the refs are correct and you need to figure out how not to do that.
… I have another question on this, I know if we completely cross the line we aren’t allowed to go back over it, but say we are on a line, in two quadrants at once, are we allowed to retreat to the previous quadrant without getting a penalty?
If the answer is no, this kind of sucks. At SCRRF, even though there were no referee’s and it may have been more rough than an actual event, we were in the process of lining up to hurdle and more times than one got “bumped gently to pass” and got knocked over the line, and therefore if we were to move backwards we would get a penalty, even though we got hit?
Thanks in advance.
If you don’t completely cross, you don’t get a penalty for going back because you haven’t crossed.
The other thing is, the “bump to pass” you describe is not a “bump to pass”, it is a PENALTY on the other team. The ONLY time you can contact a robot in the process of hurdling is if there is more than one at a time, in which case you GENTLY bump them and they have six seconds to move. (<G40>, < G42>, and <G43>) So the hurdling team effectively hurdled anyway (point difference).
Oh yeah, and <G38> says you can only signal to pass an impeding robot, and hurdling robots are explicitly not impeding.
As a warning to any team at the SCRRF scrimmage, especially whoever was knocking 399 over the line while they were hurdling (if they satisfied the definition, which they do–blatantly), you can expect to lose a LOT of points if you play the way you were yesterday!
Okay, thanks Eric, that clears up a lot of questions we had. Los Angeles should be fun, see you there 