Answered: Warnings and Skills Challenges

[Oliver_W]

Warnings are a new penalty this season, and so far (as far as I know) there hasn’t been much discussion about how they apply to skills challenges.

The relevant text in the manual is:

Violations of this rule will result in a warning for minor offenses which do not affect the match. Egregious (match affecting) offenses will result in a Disqualification. Teams who receive multiple warnings may also receive a Disqualification at the head referee’s discretion.

Warnings are able to be given for <G7>, <G8>, <SG4>, <SG5>, <SG7> and <SG8> (not all of which are relevant here).

Question 1: Should warnings be given at all in skills challenges?

Question 2: If, during a skills challenge, a team commits a rule violation that results in a warning, should that skills run be counted?

Question 3: If so, about how many warnings are acceptable before penalties should escalate to disqualification? Referees will often have an incentive to be overly lenient here, since they want to see teams from their region succeed, so I think there should be some sort of guideline.

Question 4: What constitutes an “Egregious (match affecting)” offense in the context of skills challenges? Would anything that affects the final score qualify?

Thanks Karthik.

[Karthik]

Question 1: Should warnings be given at all in skills challenges?

Yes, they should. However, the clause of “Match Affecting” should be evaluated with a much lower bar in a Skills Match. In a normal Match you’re looking at whether or not an action changed the winner of the Match. In a Skills Match you’re looking at whether or not the competing Robot earned any extra points as a result of the infraction.

Question 2: If, during a skills challenge, a team commits a rule violation that results in a warning, should that skills run be counted?

Yes, it should. But please see above on when to issue warnings in Skills.

Question 3: If so, about how many warnings are acceptable before penalties should escalate to disqualification? Referees will often have an incentive to be overly lenient here, since they want to see teams from their region succeed, so I think there should be some sort of guideline.

Please see the answer to Question 1.

Question 4: What constitutes an “Egregious (match affecting)” offense in the context of skills challenges? Would anything that affects the final score qualify?

Yes, this is correct. Please see Question 1.