Anyone see the scores from this meet? How are the low scores even possible, like 5-0?
https://www.robotevents.com/robot-competitions/vex-robotics-competition/RE-VRC-16-4934.html
Only thing I can think is that all the stars stayed on the fence, and also, stars are canceled if they are in two zones (i.e. in the very middle of the fence). That being said, I don’t see that being likely, but it is possible.
Maybe, but it’s 4 points in your far zone if you don’t load a match load cube, so where did those go? And if an element is on a robot, it counts as scored in the highest zone that the robot is touching.
Maybe almost all the scoring elements broke 
My team, 2158S, competed at this tournament today making it to the finals and winning the robot skills award. What caused the scores to be so low was the fact that all the stars pretty much ended up under the fence, which apparently if even a speck of the star or cube was on or in between the white lines under the fence, it would not be scored at all. I can tell you now that the tournament in and of itself was really small at only 14 teams showing up and rather inexperienced when it came to competing since every team except for the 2158 series was made up of rookies. The refs didn’t catch some illegal stuff that other teams were
doing and didn’t enforce certain rules on how pre-loads and driver control loads worked and what not. All of the stars were easily knocked off of the fence within the first 10 seconds of the match, but the lack of experienced bots let to more of a pushbot competition (except for our series) which got the stars stuck under the fence in some ways, making it very difficult to take the stars out. Team 2158 was doing great for the first half, going undefeated and ranking first and second when it came to our more experienced teams with decently high scores for our decently working robots, but we were unfortunately screwed over about half-way through when the REC representative called us out because we would bump up our fork against a wall to deploy after backing up because we couldn’t really incorporate a lock because of the minimal amount of time that we had. We had done this with other mechanisms in our past years of vex and no one ever seemed to call us out on it since we were technically in the 18 by 18 by 18 dimensions and inside of the starting tile, and even our head coach told the REC representative that in the past 10 years that he has done vex and hosted competitions, he had never illegalized it. Eventually, I believe that the REC coordinator found a rule which led all of 2158 to make intake locks in a hurry, since we were playing 10 quals in total with about 5 minutes between each. We eventually found a way with our coach, but it wasn’t strong enough to hold in as many rubber bands as we wanted to making our fork a lot flimsier that what it was at first. We also didn’t actually make the lock until about 2 matches after we were notified about the situation, so that kinda threw us off as well. In the end, we ranked first and second seed and picked eachother, but we were beaten by a launcher and a pushbot that got the stars stuck under the fence in the finals by crossing the white line, which the refs just happened not to catch(I bet you guys want to know about the launcher robot now, don’t you?). All in all, we decided not to question much, and accepted our faith without much sadness. The event holder did a great job of making the event fun and entertaining, but I think that the event was just too early in the season to be as interesting as most Texas competitions are, and keep in mind that this event was no where near what a common Texas event looks like.
Let us know if you guys have any questions.
Edit: None of the teams could hang either, if that helps.
TL;DR: The referees didn’t enforce the rules correctly, and incorrectly ruled that scoring objects with any part on or between the tape lines between the two near zones were not scored regardless of any other circumstances.
Would you mind taking a video of the “illegal” lock by bumping the wall? I’m just trying to figure out what rule that violates
Yeah, how would that be illegal? If you’re within the starting size when the match starts, shouldn’t you be legal?
I am having a hard time understanding what you are saying, could you or anyone else who understands what he is saying please clarify this statement.
This question is also strangely worded. We did not have a lock for our fork, it was a flip-out that was flipped out with elastics. We bumped up against the field perimeter to not violate the starting tile and in-dimension rules, which we have done in the past (past seasons) and not gotten called out for. The fork flipped out very nicely and it was quite a cool thing to watch it do so, but unfortunately that feeling did not last long. I could send you a video of how our fork flipped out and stayed in dimensions by bumping up against the wall and can also send you match footage of our fork bumped up for the first half and then “lockable” and flimsy the second half. The whole event was live streamed on twitch and possibly you tube under Battle by the Border Starstruck (I think), so you can always watch that for what the matches looked like and how the scores were so low. Luckily, we had a photographer on our team that caught all of the illegal acts of the tournament through footage, but unfortunately VEX does not accept video evidence (even when they had a live stream going that they could have gone back and watched…?).
I found the rule that the REC representative called us out on this morning:
<R4> At the beginning of any match, robots must be smaller than 18” x 18” x 18”.
a. During inspections, robots will be measured in one of two ways
i. Robots will be placed into a “sizing box” which has interior dimensions matching the
above size constraints. To pass inspection, a robot must fit within the box without
touching the box walls or ceiling.
ii. Robots will be sized using a VEX Robotics Competition Robot Sizing Tool. Robots will
be placed on a flat surface and must not touch the measurement slide as it is passed
over the surface. Please see http://www.vexrobotics.com/vex/products/competitionproducts/vrc-products/276-2086.html
for a visual reference.
We were inspected with very minimal tensioning not allowing us to flip-out during the actual inspection. We told the inspector that the fork would be bumped up against the perimeter during a match and that we would still be in 18 by 18 by 18 in the process. He passed us for it, but then was later notified of the above rule himself by the REC representative. Like I said earlier, we knew that some things were wrong with the tournament, and approached those problems professionally and with ease. We knew that if we tried to show all of the refs the rules that they were violating, the tournament would get pushed back a lot and we would lose all of our chances to win any awards because of our eagerness to win. We stayed up late nights and worked very hard to make sure that we were prepared to do well at this event, and even our rookie teams took some major risks such as working on their robots at their own homes because of the lack of very much time. We drove up 4 hours the night before and some of us missed quite a bit of schoolwork because they left early to not hit nighttime in Del Rio (it is 10 minutes away from the U.S. Mexico border). We would have been very ashamed if we were disqualified, and in the end we were definitely sad about our performance. In our district, we have a 3-day weekend this weekend, and we could not have ruined it with a disqualification. Even our mentor, who has and still is competing in VEX himself, told us that we could just bump up against the wall instead of making some sort of lock that wasn’t tension-based. The rest of the events that we plan on going to will be quite a bit more competitive than this past one, and the amount of competitions in Texas has severely decreased compared to past years. Pretty much every competition until Christmas is full, and we have seen many go up and then get cancelled or just completely removed off of robot events or even just fill up before we can even sign up, but we are all still extremely motivated. We were happy to see so many new rookie teams enter the world of VEX robotics for the first time, and gave out a few pointer tips for how their robots could be improved, which they happily took in and thanked us for. All of them were transferring over from FTC because of some new rule that they made apparently making it really hard to move on to the world championships or something like that, and one of the head coaches said that out of the 16 FTC groups that she had in her league last year, only 2 of them are still doing FTC, leading us to think that there will be a very large increase in the amount of VEX teams in Texas. The guy who hosted the event was part of that league and created 8 VEX teams out of the FTC teams that he used to have, leading us to think that there may be nearly 100 new vex teams throughout all of Texas, assuming that most of the people in the league transferred over to VEX as well. Again, we hope that everyone takes this post as a learning experience and follow certain rules that may be unclear at times such as not bumping up against the field perimeter in order to stay in dimensions.
If you have any more questions for us, feel free to ask.
If your intake was supported by the field wall, and it would have flipped out if it was facing the other way, then it is illegal.
Pretty sure that was legal as well but whatever man.
I believe that was the situation that we were in and called out for.
The wall can not be used to hold you into size.
Thank you for clarifying, glad that things are cleared up now.
Look on the bright side. It is very early in the season and you have the whole season to recover. Early last season (NBN) we were DQed for moving a stuck ball from our robot. It was clearly against the rules and - guess what? we never did it again all season! Fast forward to states, our team was DQed in the semifinals for a rule that had never had a DQ or been enforced all season, without warning. Now that bit. Be glad your state is maiking the rules clear early in the season so you won’t have a major disappointment later.
That is another scenario where they aren’t counted.
Maybe I can help. You said:
@LegoMindstormsmaniac was saying that is wrong. If the refs were saying that, they were wrong. Let’s look at the definition of scored from the game manual:
Never does this definition of scored mention the Neutral Zone (A.K.A. “space between the two white lines under the fence”). Thus, a star/cube can touch the neutral zone and still be scored, provided any of the circumstances in the definition of scored are met. For example, if a star is touching both the near and neutral zones it will be scored in the near zone.
I hope this is helpful in clearing things up. I know you are probably frustrated by this competition, but at this point all you can do is make sure everyone understands the rules correctly so this doesn’t happen again.
A Scoring Object is Scored in a Zone if it meets one of the following criteria:
- The Scoring Object is touching the Zone
a. If a Scoring Object is touching multiple Zones it is Scored in the higher point value Zone - The Scoring Object is not touching any Zone and is Supported by a Robot and/or a Scoring
Yesterday, we attended a tournament where they also enforced the rule that any scoring objects touching the neutral zone was neutral and therefore did not count any points. We attempted to show the organizer and refs the rules, but they said no and they told us to talk to them after the tournament. After the tournament, they said that, “You should have come talk to us earlier.” This rule is absolutely absurd because it gives pushbots such a huge advantage and change the overall strategy of the game.
Well, this is quite overwhelming. I honestly am not sure how I feel about this matter. I am tempted to say that what is done is done and move on, but for some reason I do not feel that that is the right move right now. Don’t get me wrong, I am not in a mad state while I am typing this, but I am in a state of calling out what has been done wrong. Because of the rule that they enforced with the neutral zone, our skills scores were a lot lower and we lost the tournament. We had put in so much time and effort into making sure that everyone was prepared and ready to compete, and the 4 hour drive was definitely something that wasn’t enjoyed that much, let alone the 100 dollars each team had to pay for their hotel rooms. We just noticed today that the few competitions that we wanted to go to in the spring are full as well, so I am not sure what this means in terms of qualifying for the next level. It seems that in Texas this year, there are a lot less events and a lot more teams that are competing. Our next 3 competitions that we are signed up for are very competitive, and I am not sure if I want this error to slide and all of our hard work to just seem like it could not have been rushed. The competition may have just had too many errors for it to be ignored, and I may want to consider contacting them in a professional way to see if maybe there is something that they could do.
I am sorry about this, though I am glad to know that someone experienced what we were experiencing and understands the frustration of the fake rule. I can fully agree with your push bot opinion, and I think that your situation was definitely worse than ours since you actually notified the judges about it. You are also in a very competitive region just like us, so I think you also feel what it is like to get so close to a qualification only to see that you did poorly because of a made-up rule.