https://vexforum.com/t/answered-dropping-cages-on-goals/41605/1
It IS legal to drop cages on mobile goals and the stationary goal, and have them wrap around the underside of said goals to make them unremovable.
Here’s an idea of what I was thinking about doing regarding this ruling choice.
build a robot that has a 8 motor drive base that has a three speed transmission.
build four collapsible cages to drop into mobile goals and have them attached by a short legal tether.
build an extendable arm with a cage on the end to block the stationary goal.
enter a competition.
during the autonomous period make a beeline to the opposing mobile goals with the fastest gear
Drop cage on far mobile goal
go down a gear
drop cage on other far mobile goal
go down a gear
start driving back to close mobile goals
during driver control drop cages on close mobile goals and extend arm to cover stationary goal
sit and watch as your teammate scores just a few cones to win the match
If you managed to grab all 4 goals, you’d definitely win. In actuality, they will probably grab both their close goals, and then your alliance partner is in a 1 v 2 with 2 extra mobile goals and a stationary goal. To guarantee a win at that point, your partner would actually need to score almost half the cones, assuming all highest stacks are tied and your opponents win autonomous. So a cool idea, but by the end of the year against top teams, probably not viable.
The mobile goals are 10" in diameter, so you could fit them in a 2x2 20"x20" space and that still leaves plenty of room for your robot. Oh I see what you’re saying. I think @antichamber 's plan is to drag them around and have short tethers? In which case I’m not sure why you would use tethers at all.
I think dragging the mobile goals is going to slow you down too much to even get three of them before your opponents do. And then your partner is left to score all on their own.
It would be awesome if someone could pull it off though. It’s too bad we can’t pick them up
You might be better off just getting 2 and building your robot so that you still have some capability to score for the rest of the match
Yup… I presume @antichamber is talking about just dropping the cage over the mobile goal and move on to another mobile goal to drop another cage.
Sigh… it is really sad that we won’t see another super-stacker (of opponents’ mobile goals). Just imagine the number of possibilities it will opened up to.
If your team grabs two of your opponents goals then drags them around it makes the goals near impossible to score on. There is no need to put any type of cage over top of the goal, and your robot can still perform normal cone operation.
Sadly in order to keep it legal, you cannot lift the goals off the ground. When I came up with this idea i didn’t realise that the tethers would count towards the limit brainstorming activated
The way I was thinking about dragging the goals around would never lift them up. I realize now my wording could have been a little better. I would just put a hoop of sorts around the goal. That hoop would be attached to me. This would allow me to manipulate the goal without “grasping” or “grappling” it. Keeping my robot just on this side of legal.
There is a great forum Question already clarifying this. Hoarding Opposing Mobile Goals
My interpretation of this is that it is legal as long as you don’t ever “Grasp” the goal. What Do you take from the forum post?
brainstorming activated