Recentley, I have had state competition, and in a very unfair way, the judges, and the alliances, didnt seem to be fairly matched. Our robot was alliance optimized, and we knew we would at least alliance with 1 good team. Instead, we only had 1 team that could even clear the low bar, and the rest were assorted flings and shovebots. Then, on top of all this horrid luck, the judges were telling me and my partner to put our controllers 2 SECONDS before the buzzer. This is insane, a lot of sad teammates and happy flings that had good alliances. I hope this system can be improved in the future.
As for having bad teammates, well that happens sometimes. I’m pretty sure the matches are randomized, I’ve experienced the same in VRC. And as for the 2 second thing well that’s just the competition is poorly ran
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I believe you mean referees, not judges. Judges are the people that interview you.
But as far as bad luck goes, sometimes it just happens. You need to optimize for it and create strategies in case things don’t go the way you want.
If the referees were telling you to put your controllers down early, talk to them about it, and try to make them understand that there is still time left. Perhaps bring it up to the EP if this is a recurring thing.
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We did talk to them… they threatened disqualification.
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Yeah I get that, except it’s just horrible luck with GOOD alliances. We teamed up with one team, got into quarter finals, their hook broke. The next tournament, we teamed up with ANOTHER team, got into quarter finals, and THEIR hook broke. We ended up qualifying for states from skills but man we could’ve won our last one if it wasn’t a literal 2v1 for that final round. And we did pretty well anyways! We got 90 to 120 I believe.
The Head Ref can’t disqualify you unless he cites the rule number violated. What rule did he think you were violating? As for bad luck, well… Sorry. It happens.
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Referees may be using the countdown monitor. Depending on the setup the sound can be delayed. Referees should be counting down “3 -2 - 1 stop, controllers down” for the matches. I run events that have multiple tables running (2 or 3 divisions) and we get the referees to use the monitors vs the sounds to avoid the delays.
Alliances are random by team.
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Was this livestreamed? You could send a video of the incident to the EP and to the EEM. You don’t need to do this publicly, the REC Foundation is generally really good about these things. I know they can’t do anything now, but they definitely will follow up in whatever way they can.
There is no rule that says that you have to put the controller down at the end of a match.
You can put your controller down:
To reset your robot. (G18)
To end a match early. (T5)
To get a match stop time in a finals tiebreaker. (Definition of Match Stop Time, T5)
If your are disabled by the referee. (Definition of Disablement)
It is a REALLY good idea, though, as if the robot moves after the buzzer and changes the score it makes the job of the ref much more difficult.
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I had remembered your post here when I was creating my own regarding alliance matchups.
Sorry for your poor luck, it must have been incredibly frustrating. I am sure it would have brought some relief to you if you could have observed the pairings.