So I was at kalahari and someone mentioned that it might be legal if you go into the “ valley “ in the last 30 seconds and push against a robot trying to hang, it is legal as long as you do not touch their climb bar, or either short barriers. Is this true?
The subsections of SG11 are quite specific in which instances you are allowed to obstruct/push another robot to prevent it from elevating, so I would take a look at this section to determine whether you are able to contact a robot or block it.
If a robot that is attempting to elevate does not fall under any of the protections in subsections of SG11 (e.g. they do not meet the definition of elevated and they are not contacting the elevation bars), then I think that pushing an opponent would be allowed provided you do not contact the opposing alliances’ elevation bars and short barriers.
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As always, double-check with the manual and see what it says.
Hint: SG11
After reading the manual, you can think through this statement again and ask yourself how feasible is it 
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At kalahari they had some super weird hang calls. Ie i was attwmpting to bbalance a hang in yhr last 10 seconds and i was crossing the barrier while touching the colored pole. And they just pushed me right off of the bariwr and then ditched so i climbed the barrier again and spun arpund and missed my hang because the time ran out. And they ruled that i wasnt attmepring to hang because ny robot xouldent hang from thw oriwntation that i was climbing in. So before you do anything ask your comps head ref at the driver meating how things are gona be ruled and interpertead. Because ive also been to comps were touching the short barrier in the last 30 immediatley results in a sg11 warning and if you gwt 3 minors its a dq. But at kala thwy didnt add up minors ad they didnt care if you touched short barrier last 30 so long as the oppoents werent activley hanging or attmwpting to hang.
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You can do whatever you want to them until they touch the bar.
you can’t touch any elevation bars and they can’t touch any elevation bars while touching you. It’s technically legal, but very difficult unless you have an 8 motor drive with all traction wheels so you can’t be moved at all, and are a very good driver.
I believe you are not allowed to at all because at our last competition we can hang and every other bot would try many different ways to knock us down and every time the judges gave them a foul.
Yes, it is legal to prevent them from elevating as long as you do not contact the elevation bar and the robot that is trying to elevate does not contact the elevation bar. But, in the time that you could prevent them from elevating you could have scored 4 triballs and then their elevation wouldn’t matter in my opinion its not worth it. Unless you have a very heavy robot or an 8 motor drive you will probably end up pushed into the elevation bar and get a major or minor violations.
It’s not even worth the potential DQ and the other team hating you. I would suggest scoring triballs during the last 30 seconds. You probably will get more points than an elevation.
I would not do that is I were u it could become a DQ
Ok so the actual rules question in the OP has been answered by several people in this thread, including @Samuel_Yao and @meng , thank you.
However, there are several recurring issues I’m seeing in this thread, on the forum, and among VRC competitors as a whole that I’d like to address:
It really amazes me just how much time VRC students waste on speculation about the rules and what is legal. Y’all, the rules aren’t some secret book locked away somewhere. They aren’t hard to read. The rules are written in plain language and are incredibly easy to understand if you would just read them. Here’s a link, the rules are right there waiting for you to read them:
99.9% of rules questions and speculation could be answered by reading the game manual for 5 minutes or less. It even has links that you can click to jump around and you can search the whole thing with Ctrl-F! Reading, researching, and finding out the truth for yourself are valuable life skills that go far beyond VRC.
There’s no reason to “hate” an opposing team in VRC for playing the game. If a team plays legal defense against your robot, and you lose, you should say “How can I make my robot better so I can win the next time?”. Any action within the rules is fair game, and you (or your opponents) shouldn’t be angry at the other side for having a better strategy.
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This would be in terms of alliance selection. Your chances of being picked go will go down if you get DQ’d
I totally agree with you on almost all of this.
My one argument is with
Would you say that it is “unreasonable” to be angry with a team who, while they technically didn’t break a rule, definitely broke the spirit of the rule?
With the running example, stopping another team from hanging is inherently against the spirit of the rule. I’d argue that pushing back another team - regardless of where they are on the field - in an attempt to stop them from reaching their elevation bar is inherently against the spirit of the rule.
I would say it’s perfectly reasonable to be angry at them, because they effectively weaseled their way into a technicality where they don’t get a violation.
This is a subjective assessment on your part. The GDC wrote SG11 to protect elevation. The wording in the rule is aimed at preventing a bot that is already elevated or in the immediate process of elevating from maintaining or achieving elevation.
Any defense that prevents access to the area near the elevation bars that does not contact the specific 4 elements of SG11 a-d is a valid defense. Why be angry with a team that follows the rules?
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Fair, that’s a great point. Still, “spirit of the rule” is a word used (albeit not in the rule being discussed here) in multiple places in the rulebook to address teams taking advantage of technicalities, so that subjectivity is at least acknowledged by VEX as a factor.
It’s not following the rules or not that I’m getting angry about though, it’s the intent behind the actions and how a team intentionally takes advantage of a technicality.
Also I would like to point out, getting angry is an emotion, and i’m pretty sure emotions can’t be anything but subjective, so the entire discussion about getting angry was subjective in the first place 
But in all seriousness, you make a great point here:
That’s probably the best response to my argument that anyone could have come up with.
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I would strongly disagree with this actually. The spirit of the rule is that teams shouldn’t be worried about being damaged by opponents while hanging and should also not be worried about being pulled off the hanging bar. The spirit of the rule is not that all defensive play is no longer allowed once the clock hits 30 seconds.
Heck, let’s look at your “spirit of the rule” versus what the game manual says is the spirit of the rule and see how they compare:
I’m not really seeing much similarity here.
Additionally, let’s take a look at G13:
These two instances (provided they do not violate SG11) are perfectly legal and are absolutely within the intention of the rules and the game.
Therefore yes, it absolutely would be unreasonable to be angry with an opponent for playing legal defense against you while you are trying to hang.
Again, all of this subjective inconsistent understanding can be dealt with by simply reading the game manual.
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Well said. I’ve been to an unofficial tournament during mid-January where I’ve seen excessively aggressive matchplay be allowed. In one of the matches, an elevated a-tier robot on the short barrier was literally pushed off the short barrier by a team going through the alley. In another match, a robot was (at least in my opinion) intentionally flipped over. The extent of the game manual should allow for fair defensive and offensive matchplay while maintaining the safety and integrity of the competition so that there is limited matchplay that could damage others, such as by preventing the damage of other robots when they are elevated.
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This might be a bit late but I asked the head ref at our last competition and he said this. “As long as the opposing robot is not touching the high bar then it is not blocking.” This means that you have a 15 second window to push them to the other side so they cannot hang before the low bar becomes protected also at 15 seconds left. This is with an RCF employee being there also confirming such a thing.
Short version:
Yes, it is legal if they are not touching the bar, after the low hang becomes protected also it is almost impossible not to get a dq for blocking hang.
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