This past weekend in the Northern Maryland District, I was drive coach for Team 612. We were the 2nd pick for the #1 seed alliance and were tasked with putting on an effective defense. After witnessing several alliances scoring 4 rotor matches we knew we had to find ways to block out the gear game.
Among other more traditional defensive play, we employed an interesting strategy and coined the term for it: “ball pitting”, where we released the field hoppers, collected a significant number of balls into our 65-ball hopper, then ran the intake in reverse in front of the opposing alliance’s gear intake zone and in front of opposing robots.
The results were amazing! Robots who relied on human player intake couldn’t reach the gear ramps, floor-intake bots were getting balls jammed in their intakes (and gears rested on balls at awkward angles), and we managed to high-side robots onto balls and get them stuck for significant periods of match time. As a result, multiple semis and finals matches did not even see a 3rd rotor spinning and scores were kept low, resulting in out alliance winning the event!
Now to figure out how to prevent a team from doing it to us…
Well sure, but a large number of robots have intakes on the opposite side of their gear mechanism (or do not have ball intakes since they did not take on a fuel approach)
G21. GAME PIECES: use as directed. ROBOTS may not deliberately use GAME PIECES, e.g.
GEARS, in an attempt to ease or amplify the challenge associated with other FIELD elements,
e.g. BOILERS, HOPPERS, or ROPES.
Violation: YELLOW CARD.
Also activating hoppers to make loading harder has been around since week one Purposefully shoving balls into their loading zone though…
I disagree. Our robot never entered their loading zone. Balls were collected from the center of the field and rolled into the gear retrieval lane. The higher density of balls in the retrieval lane caused gear-collecting robots to push those balls further into their own retrieval zone. This method would not be a violation of that rule.
Opposing robots are not a field element. Putting balls in front of other robots collecting gears on the floor is not changing the difficulty of accessing field elements. Games pieces and field elements are not defined as the same thing.
I guess we should clarify some things, firstly the penalty has nothing to do with you entering or not entering the loading zone. What do you mean by “retrieval lane” If you mean, not in the RETRIEVAL ZONE, you skim a fine line that might be legal depending on the ref. If you are literally dumping balls in the retrieval zone, it’s pretty clearly illegal.
This is one of those intent things where you can pretty easily pretend it wasn’t your intent but do it anyway. One of qual alliance partners advocated for and did this, and I was fine with it because this rule didn’t occur to me. In the future, I will be suggesting to our alliance partners not to do this. I don’t like taking advantage of intent rules. I think it sets a bad example (it’s saying it’s fine to break the rules as long as you can get away with it; would you be fine with it if teams did this for bag & tag?).
Irrelevant. The quoted rule mentions nothing about where your robot is located.
Balls were collected from the center of the field and deliberately rolled into the gear retrieval lane in an attempt to amplify the challenge associated with other FIELD elements
I added the stuff in bold, for clarity.
This method would not be a violation of that rule.
Corollary of Zera’s Law: once you realize that something you’ve been doing is actually illegal, you will be yellow-carded for it.
It isn’t illegal if you just trigger the hoppers near the opposing hoppers though. We did this several times at South Florida and Orlando and both were quite effective against teams that had narrow gear openings.
How far do you want to take this? Isn’t deploying hoppers at all during a match in which no robots are capable of shooting the same thing? Teams deploy hoppers to slow down their opponents all the time.
Is the act of activating the hopper near the opposing retrieval zone with the intent of obstructing opposing robots’ path to their loading station with fuel a violation of G21? Is the act of dumping fuel into a loading station with the intent of obstructing opposing robots’ paths to their lift pegs or ropes a violation of G21?
Answer:
In and of itself, the act of triggering a HOPPER using it’s polycarbonate panel is not a violation of G21 regardless of intent. That being said, ROBOT actions that may be taken after that point involving FUEL (such as herding FUEL into the opponent’s RETRIEVAL ZONE) may violate G21 if, in the judgement of the REFEREE/Head REFEREE, the action taken was to amplify a challenge on the FIELD.
We used this strategy back in week 2, and while it worked great it didn’t occur to any of us about G21. If I do find myself playing defense at our next regional, I definitely won’t be purposefully herding fuel into the loading station. But dumping the hoppers is generally just as effective. Because the opponent bots will be driving towards their retrieval zone, and will inevitably end up pushing the balls into their own zone.