Will it be legal to pick up your opponent’s cargo and wedge it between the hanger truss system and the walls, or within the hanger trusses themselves?
There is about 7"-8" of space between the alliance team wall and the truss structure on two of the hanger posts. There is also similar space on two posts between the side arena wall and the truss structure. The truss system appears to have about 8" between posts (according to the CAD).
If the balls are inflated to 9.5", they should compress and be able to be wedged in several locations.
I suspect that many teams will not have an intake able to extract cargo that has been wedged between hanger and wall or carefully placed within the truss system. If this is legal, a team might be able to effectively make access to a significant portion of their opponent’s cargo more difficult.
Looking at G402 and I don’t think this would be deliberately stranding cargo (I don’t think). The cargo wedged between the walls and trusses would still be accessible if your robot was designed to retrieve wedged cargo. Also, looking at G404, and I’m not sure that applies either. The robot is not restricting access to the cargo, it’s accessible if you have the correct mechanism.
I’m not asking this as potential strategy for our team, but more from the perspective of intake design - do we need to design an intake able to extract wedged cargo?
I feel like this would indeed fall under G402. As you are amplifying the game challenge for the other team by by essentially stranding the cargo in an area where robot shouldn’t normally be designed to get it from.
Would you think it’s legal to shoot your opponent’s cargo 20’ in the air straight up to amplify the challenge of collecting balls? Does that fall under G402 as well? What about shooting your opponent’s cargo to the other end of the field?
Uhhhh
Gunna pull a GDC reply and preface that these rulings will ultimately be up to to referees/head ref at your event. So take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
Assuming the ball landed in a normal spot of the field in each scenario, and wasn’t any more difficult to get if the ball was just there normally, then that’s fine.
Depending on how fast you do this, you could be starting to walk the line of G403 where you could be considered to be “in control” of more than 2 cargo.
Unless your team ranks high at your events, employing game strategies that run counter to the strategies that the top teams at those events want to use will likely get your team put on the Do Not Pick list. Often it is teams that play overly aggressive defense and get a lot of penalties that are put on the DNP list.
No, that cargo is being deliberately stranded. It’s not on TOP of the Hangar, but it’s just as inaccessible. At least Cargo on top of the Hangar can be shot or shaken down…
Just because someone with the “right kind of intake” can get to it doesn’t mean that it’s not intentionally stranding it, and with the luck of the draw everyone with the “right kind of intake” will be on your side of the field.
Also, there’s one other rule to be aware of: H201.
H201 is an “interesting” rule, particularly in this context. It’s a bit of a catch-all, as well as being an enhancer. The “enhancer” part is essentially that even rules that don’t have a card in the penalty section can get a card if the violation is bad enough or repeated enough. The “catch-all” part? “Beyond what is listed in the rules”. Basically, if the rules don’t cover a violation that’s bad enough to need covering, you can be carded.
Also something to be aware of: If >1 robot is doing this on an alliance, G203 may come into play.
To answer the original question: I don’t think you’ll need to worry too much about someone doing it intentionally. Accidentally? Well, accidents happen.
Also, G402’s core is about using CARGO to ease/amplify other challenges, OR stuffing Cargo in inaccessible places. If you’re just firing opposing cargo around inside the field, it’s defense, unless you start trying to snipe their robots.
It’s also of note that there’s no way that you’re getting 1.5" of compression on those balls. Ignoring all of the other red flags, it’s immediately stopped there. The AndyMark video is the best example of this I’ve seen so far.
Just to be clear, I expressly stated in my initial question that this was not a strategy we were considering. In designing an intake, I just wanted to know if we should consider the possibility of having to retrieve wedged balls. if this was a legal strategy, it might impact our intake design.
So, intake from the floor, intake from the terminal, and intake bouncing/moving balls are the only intake scenarios. Don’t have to worry about wedged balls. Thanks!
For a team to design to do that doesn’t seem profitable. For a team to do that accidentally doesn’t seem likely. Since all cargos shot into the hub or out of the field return to the field floor, you’d have to convince me of some benefit before I design for it.
Other scenarios
Intake against a wall
Intake against a hanger strut (if that is any diffeent)
Intake in a corner
Not sure about this one but intake a cargo half way into the bottom of a terminal and not moving
Was this successful? Was compliance built into the shooter for this?
I’ve gotten conflicting reports constantly about the compression of the balls but 3" is the most drastic that I’ve heard of- can’t figure out if our balls are properly pressurized or not.
We think ours are properly pressurized but we don’t know bc we don’t have a pressure sensor with that resolution.
There was no compliance in the shooter.
In terms of success all I know is we fired it onto a roof ~75 feet away.
