We were recently at a competition and the competition was going smoothly until there was a team that purposely ran into our C teams robot and tore off the back section of the chassis. Is this legal, since the referee said that since they were not in contact with the robot for more than 5 sec that it was legal?
I thought the 5 sec rule applied only to pinning/trapping. But if they also tore off a part of the robot, that has to do with purposeful Entanglement, possibly R3 (subsystems that can damage other robots or the field), and G12 (strategies aimed at destruction).
Unless it was the builder’s fault (like the thing was going to fall apart anyways), that was very very illegal.
That’s my interpretation, unless I am sorely mistaken.
The thing that happened is that we were going to park but a part of their robot latched onto ours and pulled onto it until it came apart/got out of the parked position.
If they did not intend to latch onto you, then they should have worked to un-latch themselves. Instead, they kept pulling on you; this is evidence of purposeful entanglement and a G12 violation. That is illegal.
Was it match affecting? Would you have won if you got the parking bonus?