Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with judges when they put the game objects wrong? Whenever i can this year i’ve just been lining stuff up like it’s supposed to before the match starts because some people have lined them up wrong in such a way that it affected our auton. However, there have been a couple people that have told me to keep my hands off them but they wouldn’t correct the object when they were told it’s set up wrong 
Any advice???
I just thought i would ask as we have state saturday and i would hate to lose AP’s because someone doesn’t set the field up right. Thanks in advance 
I don’t know that there’s much more that you can do other than complaining at a higher level.
Often times the objects are set up by field resetters who don’t know that the stars are supposed to be facing a certain way or don’t care. In the past we’ve casually fixed any objects that were not set up right and affected our auton while placing our robot. By the time anyone notices, we are usually already done. If it goes further than that, then I would show them the instructions for how to set up the objects and say that you were just trying to help out.
Our teams do that as well.
If they happen to ask the players to reset the field after a match, do the best job you can for the next people on the field. It won’t help you directly, but maybe if everyone starts to do it…
Here’s a field picture I took at a recent competition. One side was reset by the officials. The other side by a member of 6135K.
Show up with a copy of the manual and Q & A. If you have it on an electronic device, make sure you’ve stored it locally on your device so you don’t need internet access to get to the manual. Printed paper copies can be useful since they don’t require internet or power, but it can take longer to find the rule you want to reference.
Our teams have gotten admonished, scolded, and profusely thanked for fixing setup problems on the field. Be polite, non-confrontational, and hope that your best efforts will be enough. Accept it when they aren’t; there are very few alternatives.
Since this is a higher level competition, you probably won’t have to really worry about it being a problem. If it is, just try to nudge the objects into the correct position without it seeming as though your intentions are to only benefit yourself.
If it becomes a problem, take it to the main person at the event or head ref and try to have them kindly straighten up their field resetting crew.
I am not sure who Eric will have as the head ref, but I doubt it will be an issue there. If it is, I am confident that if you bring a copy of the rules, it will be handled correctly. You might even bring up the issue in the driver’s meeting just so the refs understand how important it is that things are placed correctly.
I am pretty sure they plan to have three fields but run one match at a time like they did at their tournament earlier this year. That should give plenty of time to get the field set correctly. I will be talking to Eric (EP) this week. I will also mention this to him. He is a stickler for rules. I doubt it will be an issue once it is brought up.
Good luck.
Especially at non-VEX competitions, the field resetters are usually volunteers, some of which don’t know what they’re doing. Hasn’t happened to us so far, but fixing field objects seems to be OK for some, not OK for others. If its clearly off, you shouldn’t have a problem, but as for small errors, just to be safe, have a printed out diagram of how the field should be set up so if anyone asks you’re good.
Yeah, i’m not really worried about it. They were EXTREMELY good at the zionsville comp. The only problem i had is how fast they ran. It made it very difficult to get skills runs in so hopefully they slow down a bit this time.
I agree Eric & whomever he picks as the head ref. will do things as accurately as possible. However, I doubt the schedule will slow down. He likes things to run on time.
I suggested they do what they did at Heritage. There, they ran skills on all the fields from as soon as you were inspected until the driver’s meeting and then again at lunch. They were able to have over 140 skills runs that way since they were using all the fields. Additionally, you did not have to worry about missing matches. I hope he gives it good consideration. He was there and saw how well it worked. The biggest issue is having enough volunteers to pull it off. I agreed to help and I am sure others would as well.
Just curious as to which tournaments this was a problem.