At a competition in Georgia I am competing at today, the opposing alliance parked their robot in our starting tile during the last 30 seconds, stopping us from lifting and scoring our last driver loads. The ref caught the rule break, and disqualified the team. However, the alliance didn’t receive a score of zero, they were awarded all the points they scored. Therefore, we ended up losing the match by 2 points. Shouldn’t the alliance get a score of zero? Shouldn’t we have been awarded the win? This is the way that all tournaments I have attended before have handled this situation. It was clearly a “match-effecting” rule break. Thanks.
Yes they should have gotten 0 points. What I think happened is that the person running the tournament manager software did not input that at the end of the match. Also rule t01b states:
Any questions for the referees must be brought forward by a student drive team member within
the time period of two (2) qualifying matches or immediately after the score is announced of an
elimination match.
We talked to the ref immediately, and they did check DQ in the tournament manager software. Still, they were given points and we lost. Head ref said its not in the rules, and thats the tournament software so its official.
That is not correct. In qualification matches a DQ does not affect the whole alliance, just that specific team. OP did not say whether this was a qualification match or elimination match which changes what happens in this case.
The alliance should receive a score of 0 in elimination matches, but not qualification matches. If previous events you’ve been at have given scores of 0 in instances where only one team received a DQ for qualification matches, they’re the ones that have been running events wrong.
Am I correct in assuming this was a qualification match?
It was a qualification match. We must have been mistaken. Thanks!
Cameron please read the rules and talk to the other teams at the event and the judges in a calm manner next time. Judges are generally more likely to help you out and explain the rules to you and your team if you approach it this way and bring your question to the head judge. It is also very helpful to include all details such as it being a qualification match because as nallen01 said, it is only a dq for the offending team which is very different from an elimination match where the whole alliance would get a dq.
This rule is pretty unfair, but it exists to avoid penalising a team for having a partner that breaks the rules. I can definitely see why it’s unintuitive and I agree with your frustration. I agree that this situation wasn’t fair for your team, but it’s what the current rules say has to happen.
A suggestion from the community, which I support, is that in qualification matches the team being disqualified should get 0 WP and all three other teams should get 2 WP. Disqualifying a team because their partner broke the rules is unfair, but so is allowing two teams to lose because their opponent broke the rules. Hopefully we will see this rule implemented in the manual in future seasons.
I’m guessing you mean that this should happen in the case that the alliance with a disqualification “won” in regards to score? It wouldn’t make sense to have a team that was blown out get a win because their teammate got disqualified.
Yes, that’s correct.
I see how this would make it more fair for the teams, but there’s so many possibilities on this that could make it more fair for one alliance or the other.
Maybe the teammate of the DQed team actually beat the other alliance singlehandedly and the DQed team did something stupid that didn’t affect the other teams. Then it wouldn’t be fair for the losing teams to get WP because they wouldn’t have won anyways.
Or on the other end of the spectrum maybe the teammate of the DQed team didn’t move at all. Then it would be unfair for that DQed team to also receive WP because they would’ve have lost anyways.
My point isn’t that the current system is the best, but that it provides a more objective and clearly defined system. I can’t think of any other system that would be better, though, that doesn’t require case by case analysis. And I personally think that it would be more fair than giving all 3 teams WP.
Unrelated point but I suddenly had this vision of a tournament in which 1/4 of the teams had 0 WP and the other 3/4 had all WP because giving 3 teams WP messes with the balance of WP throughout the tournament 
Most of the rules that a team would be DQed over have this at the end:
At least in my experience most disqualifications are because of a single egregious incident, rather than repeated violations, because teams tend to stop doing whatever is they’re doing wrong once warned. So if a team gets DQed, they usually get DQed because they broke a rule in a way that the referees believe affected the outcome of the match.
Ya, the most important thing is to remember DQs for the most part happen in a situation in which the ref’s agree the aforementioned team broke the rules and the violation directly made their lose a win. Take a look at this analysis done by Oliver, myself and few others a a few months ago.
https://vexforum.com/t/answered-disqualification-as-applied-to-qualification-matches/30583/1
Here’s a complete list of things that can get you disqualified during a match:
- Unsafe robot actions or causing damage (S1)
- “tipping, Entanglement, or damage [that] is ruled to be intentional or egregious” (G12)
- Being “disrespectful or uncivil to event staff, volunteers or fellow competitors” (G17)
- Doing something illegal that changes the outcome of a match.
- Doing something illegal that doesn’t change the outcome of a match, when you have previous warnings (at the head ref’s discretion).
There are of course other things that are illegal, but those things are dealt with between matches rather than during matches. (You can get disqualified for having an illegal robot if a referee notices after the start of a match that your robot is illegal. But if the referees and inspectors are on to it then hopefully that won’t happen, and in practice it is rare).
The majority of in-match disqualifications are (4)s. With those, there is already a built-in decision that the referees have to make about whether or not the action changed the outcome. If it did, and the team is disqualified, then what you are saying to that team’s opponents is “yes you would have won if the other team hadn’t broken the rules. We caught them and penalised them but we’re still giving you a loss for the match”. That doesn’t make sense, and it’s not fair. That situation specifically is the one where the rule needs to be changed. It does not apply to all disqualifications, but it does apply to a clearly defined class which is the majority of disqualifications.
The 6 WP rule probably shouldn’t apply to S1 disqualifications.
It probably should apply to G12s. A G12 doesn’t need to be match affecting to be a disqualification, but it’s more likely to be penalised if it was match affecting and it can be hard to tell whether it was match affecting or not.
It should not apply to G17s.
That leaves category (5). They way I use my “head ref’s discretion” personally is to disqualify teams when there is some chance that their action changed the outcome, even if it’s a small chance. I don’t give category (5) DQs to teams when they lose a match, though I would certainly consider doing so if their rule breaking was helping them to score SPs that they would need later. This approach is based on this thread from a couple of years ago, in particular this section:
So for me at least, category (5) DQs are essentially a watered-down version of category (4), and I would support giving 6 WP DQs in these cases.
To summarise: For DQs where the DQed team is on the higher scoring alliance, 2 WP would be given for S1 and G17 DQs. 6 WP would be given for all other DQs. For DQs where the DQed team is on the lower scoring alliance, 4 WP would be given, as is currently the case.
There isn’t really a “balance” that needs to be maintained. The fact that there are always 4WP given out per game under the current system isn’t essential to making the system work. (and it isn’t the case for DQs, where only 2 WP are awarded). With the current rules, you could have a tournament where no one gets any WP or SP or match points, and the ranking is decided randomly. It’s possible, but it’s not going to happen.
As the post linked by Tabor says, the most important outcome of qualification match scores is the relative ranking of the alliance captains and this makes unfair losses a bigger deal than unfair wins. It’s especially true that two unfair losses and an unfair win in a match (which is what happens with a “match affecting” DQ) is worse than one unfair win.
Richie, when I called you, you completely agreed with me, and told me that I should go fight it. Second, I was completely respectful and calm to the refs, and they were very aware that it was a qualification match, and so were you. Yes we were mistaken, and now I understand the rule.
Totally forgot about that rule. Thanks for the correction!
Yes I know I told you to talk to the refs and I am glad that you did it in a calm manner :)I missed the details and yeah now we understand what the rules really are and how the dq system works for teams. I would probably have done the same thing and talked to the refs…
I also want to point out that the situations in which a dq is given that involve lifting is very inconsistent between different tournaments. I don’t feel like the referees understand the rules thoroughly enough and the rules are somewhat ambiguous as to what would deserve a dq during lifting. We lift robots almost every match and half of the time we are blocked illegally and the referees have to issue a dq. If teams knew this rule better there were be less disputes over lifting and a smoother run competition with fewer delays.
I feel like lifting is a very important and interesting part of the game but half the time it is blocked illegally by the opposing alliance and I think these rules should be made clearer to all teams before future competitions and the state and world competitions.
I couldn’t agree with you more about this point. As you know Echo team(we compete at a lot of the same tournaments) we elevate every tournament and illegal contact from the opposing alliance while our alliance robot is try to get on lift has been a constant occurrence / violation and has cost us several matches and 1 tournament championship. Several tournaments the referees get it right each and every time. Some tournaments they never and refuse to give a DQ…even in eliminations…match effecting…just give warnings all day long…VERY FRUSTRATING…