Was anyone else here at the Indiana State Robotics championship? There were multiple DQs in finals yet they only DQd one alliance. So if the refs aren’t going to be consistent in finals that also brings into question were they consistent throughout the entire event. They were leveling skills fields AFTER some teams had already run. Again no consistency. It’s a shame a World Championship qualifier can’t be consistent.
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Hi @Brystore, I was there (team 1417R) and I had the same question. Actually, the coach of team 6209R leveled the skills fields. There was also the issue of the new balls being smaller than the original ones. (yes, this did mess up our autonomous). However, this event is run by voluntieers, and I think it wasn’t bad at all. (Thank you so much @Steve_Hassenplug for your work as skills head ref!)
As for the illeagal china loading, I don’t think any of the teams who were in the top three had the violations. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t been DQed, but it didn’t matter too much. But remember, these people are voluntieers, and I am sure they were trying to make it the best for all of the teams. (BTW, what team are you on?)
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I was there and I saw that. Go to the MS livestream and watch match F14. Then watch F10. I was in the stands watching F10 and I was sitting next to 2 or 3 other teams. We all agreed that that team “China loading” should have been DQed. In F10, both teams were DQed because of one mistake, but in F14, the robot passed the line at least 6 times before it was legal. It is a shame that the refs weren’t consistent, but F10 would not have made it to worlds if they hadn’t been DQed, and F14 didn’t make it to worlds for teamwork. (10404A won Amaze)
Go back and watch the live streem for MS Qualification match #100. The S1 violation (2 seperate times) and the illegal loads. That would’ve dropped 46032E average to 95.66 which would’ve not qualified them to finals. They won teamwork too. I haven’t even begin to look at others, but I can’t imagine that with all the illegal loads that I saw in finals those teams did not break those rules. What is frustrating is that this is a rule from the Game Manual 0.1. No robots in the load zone prior to a ball loaded. This is a State championship and a World Qualifying event. I saw many good teams not get to go because the played in the rules.
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Fun stuff.
As @BananaPi mentioned, the refs are volunteers, and many only help one weekend a year, so they have much less experience than any of the coaches and teams. If we only used the most experienced Head Refs, our IQ state event would have about 40 teams instead of 233 teams.
As for the live calls during the match, they are very hard for anyone to do. Yes, it would be nice if teams did not choose a strategy that forced the refs to make split-second calls, but teams choose to push the limits.
The floor of the building with the skills fields was inconsistently uneven. The fields were leveled early Friday, then moved to give teams more space, which threw everything off. So, the fields were leveled again Saturday morning, and teams that had an autonomous run Friday night were allowed to discard that score and have another run.
We all try to give the teams the best chance to be successful.
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hi there, could you please link the video? i cant seem to find it
link the video?
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I wish I knew that.
Apparently, one of the refs amitted that he was told to ignore any loading violations with the china loading bots. This would explain why there were so many uncalled violations.
My opinion may be a bit dour because I had a terrible match schedual and didn’t even make finals, but these uncalled violations are frustrating. Indiana is the best Vex region because of the quality of teams, not because of refs not calling the violation.
On the bright side, how did everyone at State like the Jugglenauts’ (100A) performance at opening ceremony?
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Do you know why the refs didn’t call the violations?
My teams auton was drifting, but that was probably not the field’s fault, because we needed to redo some code on Friday night and we couldn’t test it because the line to the practice fields were way to long.
I did like the opening ceremony. On Friday, I was walking around the v5 pits because free stuff, and I got their sticker. When I saw their team number, I thought “Hmm, that sounds familiar”, so I checked when I got back to the pits.
As mentioned by one of the referees in a Discord post: