Interesting. We were told that if the pedestal did not light up to talk to the FTA & Head Ref after the match. If we had lost the match they would have granted a replay. I heard at some events they would grant the replay if the difference was a reasonable to have made up with the time left.
There were several matches including one of our qualification match replays where no rematch was granted because we had won the match.
How long of a delay? A short delay is normal… an excessive delay (like 30 seconds) often results in a repay.
Not sure if you are referencing Curie 2011 or Vegas 2014 regarding the not warranting a replay, but the interference at Vegas did change the game, the ball was headed straight for the 1717 HP with 1717 waiting for the ball right in front of him. The cameraman knocked the ball back into the field of play and it had to be chased down on the opposite of the field under heavy defense. It could very easily have cost them 15-20 seconds to retrieve the ball vs the couple seconds catching/tossing would take.
The interference at Vegas did not significantly change the outcome of the semifinals match. The margin of victory of the first match was 78 points (203 to 125). This is more than the 60 points of a perfect cycle (and how many perfect cycles have we seen with a catch?). A perfect cycle under heavy defense takes much longer than 15 or 20 seconds, and would still not have been enough to change the outcome of the match. The actions of the cameraman did not significantly impact the outcome of this match.
There was a match at Vegas on Friday, Q-41, where a referee punched a ball that was coming at him. The result of this match was a tie. In this case the referee’s actions did have a very significant impact on the outcome of the match, as 15-20 seconds chasing down the ball could have drastically changed the outcome of this match. No replay was given for this match.
I would like to see the head referee and the FTA be more consistent in their decisions of what merits a replay based on outside interference and the significance of it’s impact on the outcome of the match.
A simple solution to that would be to not shoot the ball at a referee…
Last weekend I looked up from punching in a truss to see a ball flying at my face. I punched the ball back into the field, as I value my face more than someone’s match win. Referee’s positions are outlined in the manual. It’s no different than hitting the allaince wall and having the ball bounce back into play.
Cameramen locations are not mentioned in the manual, so I could why that could be cause for a replay, if their actions were deamed to affect the outcome of the match.
Tl;dr, don’t hit referees and expect them to help you.
It was actually the semifinals. We came out on the losing end, but it was 5 very close, intense matches. We had a simiar thing happen in the semifinals on Newton field in 2010…won the first match, then 2 ties, then we finally won match 4.
I haven’t seen one go that long due to replays. We had 2 replays due to field faults at Waterford last week, but not in the same round - one in the semifinals and one in the finals.
In the west Canada Regional, we only had one replay, because the volunteers forgot to give our alliance a ball. I was quite glad we got to replay, though, because our robot battery failed in the middle of that match. :ahh:
Good info.
With respect to Q-41, it is hard to assign either way how much time is gained or lost. How can time lost due to a deflected ball bouncing back into play be compared with how much time it takes a volunteer to chase down a ball if it is not directly deflected back in? Personally, I see it as a wash one way or another, especially with the inconsistent Human play inbounding a ball we have seen. Not including the time to retrieve the balls that have wandered past the volunteers, I have seen many human players (all positions) hold the ball up to 40 seconds trying to get a perfect throw into a bot after the ball went out-of-bounds. I would venture to say, on average, that can easily eclipse any extra times needed to chase down a ball deflected back inbounds.
Besides refs, I have also seen many cases where volunteers have stuck their hands up and deflected the balls back in, both accidental and on purpose. I think the larger problem here is the lack of definition of interference of “outside of game field”, especially how it ties into rule G11. I would rather see a cameraman and other nearby personnel be given the opportunity to defend themselves and/or their property from a loose ball without fear of causing an interference fault. If there is no malicious intent to cause a delay, any non-field-of-play person should be seen as no different than hitting a table or chair or whatever. Luck of the bounce, I suppose.
With all that said, I need to applaud team 1717 and their alliance for surviving the grudge match as they did. I really liked the robustness and repeatability of their design, and was fascinated by their serpent-like defense that was effective with minimal contact to any other bot. Here’s to hopefully meeting up again in St. Louis, either as alliance partners or competitively!
Curie 2011
Usually the crew visits one of the district events to get a feel for where they will lay out their equipment. I’m assuming they did this again this year. It’s not something that will be left to chance.
I don’t think that many teams are purposely shooting balls at the referees, the cameramen, or out of bounds. Other robots hit your robot and affect your shots. Shots don’t always go to your human player. It’s part of the game. I also don’t see how this is relevant to the issue at hand.
It’s not a matter of protecting your face as a ref or your equipment as a cameraman, it’s a matter of “should a replay have been granted?”.
Referee and volunteer positions are not mentioned in the game manual. Is it grounds for a replay if a volunteer running the media streaming PC punches a ball away to protect their PC? This happened several times in Vegas.
This is the root cause. Again, there needs to be more consistency in the decisions of what merits a replay based on outside interference and the significance of it’s impact on the outcome of the match, especially within the same regional. The bottom line is that it’s very clear that in this case the cameraman’s actions did not significantly affect the outcome of the match, and thus it makes no sense to have granted a replay.