Rules <G6> and <G7> make it clear that a team is disqualified for certain actions (touching field objects or robot, coach touching controls). Absence of information regarding alliance partners seems to imply that the alliance partner receives no penalty, i.e., that the partner would be allowed to keep all the win points and SP’s earned up until the time of the violation. Is this correct?
If a team ranks in the top 8, is it permitted to decline to serve as captain (and thus, not participate in elimination rounds)?
Finally, if a tournament has a capacity of 24 teams, with 24 teams attending and one of the participating teams disqualifies itself during the tournament, how does this affect the number of seeds? Would it drop from 8 to 6, under Event Modifications for small tournaments? Also, would the number of awards also drop, as the threshold from mid-sized to small tournament would be crossed?
Yes, this correct. Please see the definition of disqualification in Section 3 - The Tournament of the VEX Round Up Game Manual.
Yes, this is permitted. An example of reason for this would be if a team’s robot was damaged beyond repair.
The number of seeds will be left to be determined by the Event Partner. The number of awards would not change as this would have been determined by the registration count. All that being said, I have yet to hear of an instance where a team was disqualified from the entire tournament.