Answered: <G7> Promptly placing robots following a timeout

[rothomega]

Hi, I have a question on G7, which is as follows:

<G7> During the qualification rounds, the red Alliance has the right to place its Robots on the field last. During the elimination rounds, the higher seeded Alliance has the right to place its Robots on the field last. Once a Team has placed its Robot on the field, its position cannot be readjusted prior to the Match. A Team that violates this rule will have its robots randomly repositioned by the referees.

At a recent tournament, there was a situation where my alliance was the higher seed, and our opponents had called a timeout. We knew they were going to have one of their robots run an autonomous to run into and interfere with our autonomous. We wanted to utilize the right to place last in G7, but out opponents waited until the final seconds of the time out to place their robots in the final positions. My alliance had to then swap places and I have to change a jumper configuration to switch the side the autonomous was meant to run on. The ref was saying we had to be ready to start immediately following the timeout. We did not have time to align our robot, and I had to be jumping off the field at around 2 or 1 in the 3,2,1 countdown to start autonomous. The other team was saying at the ref that I should be DQed for staying on the field so long. In the end, the autonomous didn’t matter and we won the match by a decent margin.

My question is, how promptly does the lower seeded team have to place their robots during or after a timeout, and how much time is reasonable for the higher seeded time to place/rearrange their robots? I know many referees try to start matches within 10 seconds of the timeout ending to save time, and sometimes, this ends up harming the higher seed alliance, which is given an advantage in the rules.

[VEX_GDC]

We cannot provide a blanket guideline for this situation. While the higher seed’s right to place last should be honored per <G7>, Head Referees will work with their Event Partner to establish how much leeway is acceptable given event cycle times, schedule, previous delays from this alliance, etc. 10 seconds is probably fine; 5 minutes is probably excessive.