In our competition yesterday, we had a match in which the opposing robot attempted to block our auton. They ended up driving into our 10 pt zone, so the judges awarded us the auton bonus. However, that robot then proceeded to lose connection and was stuck in our 10 pt zone for the rest of our match. What would the ruling be on that? It was not match effecting in our case as we scored 111-0 but if the score was like 80-75, would this be considered match effecting?
It is always difficult to issue a blanket ruling based on a snapshot of a match. That said, in general, a robot malfunction (such as lost connectivity) should not excuse a Robot from performing an illegal action. If the score was 80-75, and your alliance was unable to place a Mobile Goal into the 10 Point Zone as a result of the defensive robot sitting in the way, then yes, this could be considered a Match Affecting violation of <SG10>.