So at 1:17 in this you can see the blue alliance stack a red mobile goal on the corner of the field. Is this legal? Technically the base is “breaking the plane” of the home zone, so it should be considered scored under that criteria. As far as I’ve seen this isn’t addressed in the rulebook, and I haven’t found anywhere this question has popped up. Furthermore, if it is legal, this would qualify as being hoarded as long as it’s blocked, maxing out a robots number of goals that it can hoard, correct? Can someone clarify or point in a direction where this was ruled on? Thank you!
Definition of scored for a mobile goal in home zone - A Mobile Goal is considered Scored in an Alliance Home Zone if, at the end of the Match, any part of the Mobile Goal Base is at least partially within the Alliance Home Zone (i.e. “breaking the plane” of the Zone).
Yep, as you said this would be scored and is legal as it is still “within” the field.
Hoarding – A Robot is considered to be Hoarding a Mobile Goal if it is actively blocking an opposing
Robot’s access to a Mobile Goal without directly Possessing it, such as by expanding horizontally
across a portion of the field.
This would be hoarding, as you are cutting off access to a mobile goal.
I do not think there has been a Q&A on this, and if there has it will most likely be posted below shortly. The general consensus right now is that it is legal, but it was not clarified in the new game manual release or in a Q&A to my knowledge.
In my opinion it would be legal, but not a good idea. Anything that is outside of the field or in contact with something outside of the field is “dead” and worth 0 points. I guess it comes down to how high the game space extends vertically, and if contacting the walls like that counts as contacting the floor transitively (that’s how it works on platforms, so I guess it would apply here if the goal is to be counted at all).
That brings up another question in regard to hoarding:
Since it’s not being actively blocked by a robot once left on the corner, i.e. the robot has driven away, would this still be considered hoarding? It isn’t blocking access to any robot with a lift, but it is to any robot without. So would this be a case-by-case basis depending on who exactly you’re competing against?
If the hoarding rule is looked at again from earlier, robots must be actively blocking access to the mobile goal. If they are not blocking this, this is not hoarding.
It doesn’t seem like a viable strategy to me. Too difficult to pull off, and at risk of knocking the goal out, which would take it away from your side if that happens during the last 30 seconds.
Yeah, especially with it being fairly easy to hold 3 mobile goals, which is more than enough. I would say that they only did it for the joke as it was talked about in drivers meeting.
The only possible reason I can think that someone would do this would be to place the opposing alliances filled alliance goal in a really weird place that could indirectly cause it to be knocked out and de-scored. This isn’t really against the rules as you don’t de-score the rings on it but if the wall gets taped by anything it could possibly cause it to leave bounds.
In other words stupid but creative idea that probably would never work to do anything.
Ha, someone asked about this in my drivers meeting last weekend. Now I know why!
In addition, if you balance a goal on the corner and it falls out, I think you could be getting dangerously close to “intentionally removing scoring objects from the field” which could escalate to a DQ under SG9.
Plus there is no guarantee that events will have those big triangular corner gussets – some may be using the L-shaped gussets from TT (see this Q&A), which I imagine would make that balance harder.
If you have a claw that can do it accurately and consistently like my team does (I attempted this 10 times during practice recently and I succeeded 8 of those times and the two times I failed it fell back into the field, not out) it actually can be quite a good strategy. Once you’ve practiced enough doing this can take about 2-4 seconds and is definitely worth it to do since the other alliance can’t grab it without risking knocking it out.
a better strategy with similar applications is where teams will place a pile of match loads on the field, and then place a goal on top of those match loads to free up the clamp for another goal. Many robots can struggle to grab goals which are propped up on a bunch of rings.
but really it’s just so easy to just hold 2 goals and then push a third into a corner where there’s no way an opponent can get it and nothing more you really need to do.
So imo it would not be hoarding as the robot is not actively blocking the goal. Idk about ot being scored but since goals on an unbalance dplatform that aren’t touching the mat are counted as low scoring goals I guess that if you were to put one of your own goals up there it would count towards your score. But of you put the others alliance goal up ther then I don’t think it would be scored as it is not on their side of the field. Also the team that put the goal up on the post is a VERY good team with lots of tournament experience and would have carefully read over the game manual and asked about it before attempting a strategy that could have gotten them DQed and eliminated in the final round. So I’m pretty sure that it is a viable and legal strategy.
