Hello! I have a competition coming up, and I thought that it’d be better safe than sorry to ask about something I’m looking for a tiny bit of clarification for.
I assume that SG7 allows permission for my robot to enter the opposing team’s tile, as long as I don’t enter the loading zone triangle in the corner. However, I am not entirely sure whether this will be legal if I were contacting their robot that would be half inside the loading zone and half outside, but fully within the climbing zone.
I understand that SG11 explicitly states that contact with robots in the climbing zone in the last 30 seconds is not legal.
My main question is: for before the last 30 seconds of the match, is contacting and playing defense by pushing and blocking allowed with opposing robots that are contacting their loading zone, as long as we ourselves don’t enter the loading zone whatsoever? (Also does this apply for autonomous as well?)
For the purposes of both <SG7> and <SG11>, both direct and indirect contact with Loading Zone is prohibited. Specifically, contacting a Robot which is contacting a Zone, is considered indirect contact, and thus could trigger a violation of either rule.
Thanks for the answer! I do have another question that my mentor just posed to me after thinking about your answer for a second. We realize that indirect contact with robots inside the loading zone is illegal now, but we still have plans to maybe play some defense on the opposing alliance. What is the ruling for if we are simply blocking the robot, not contacting or being inside the loading zone whatsoever, but the opposing alliance’s robot drives into our robot, thus causing us to technically be “indirectly contacting” the loading zone area? As I understand it, this would be a minor case of SG13 in some fashion.