Our team have been rereading the rulebook recently and stumble on a rule that stated that if a non-vex piece is visually mimicking an in game piece it would be considered illegal “ Decorations that visually mimic Field Elements, or could otherwise interfere with an opponent’s Vision Sensor, are considered functional and are not permitted. ”
This is problematic for us because we use a yellow colored rope for our endgame expansion that when in storage slightly resembles an ingame disk (picture bellow).
So my question is; does a rope count as a non-functional design element or a legal functioning non-vex piece and be excluded from this rule?
Can you use field colors such as red, blue, or yellow on your robot?
If used to cover tiles during expansion, then it serves a purpose. If it were purely a “non-functional decoration,” it would not be used to cover tiles (therefore, be functional) and can not mimic a game element to be considered non-functional.
This string obviously serves a purpose (endgame), so it does not abide by this rule. And to be honest, I’m not sure why teams would be tracking discs with a vision sensor that high up (most teams have it pointed at the ground as that’s where they would be intaked from).
In general, most VEX Hardware pieces are different colors from VRC game elements, so they will not cause any problems. The issue then becomes when teams take a gander at painting/anodizing their robot, and this is where they need to be careful about not violating R12 (as that would be a legal decoration, again as per R12). In general, I would recommend making sure your robot’s structure doesn’t violate this rule, as it would not be a fun competition when you need to replace every c-channel because it violates this rule.
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It would be up to the Inspectors/Head Ref if its legal but seeing how they would ideally like alliance colored string (Red or Blue) or easily identifiable string I don’t see why yellow would be an issue