Yesterday we went to a tournament and after placing first in qualification, we knew we had a target on our back.
What we did not expect is that 2 robots to continue to ram us from both sides; especially having our sister team target us the most. After talking with our coaches, one cares but has no power to do anything; the other only cares about winning and won’t do anything. The way the coach defends this is by stating you can be as rough as you want as long as it is less than 5 seconds of contact.
I know multiple people who recorded that fiasco of a match, so I was wondering if I got proof of it being more than 5 seconds of contact if I can take that anywhere. Before that round, we won every match by 10-12 points but because we were being targeted our allied team could only score 9 points the other team scoring nearly 20 after destroying our robot. We have videos of keps-nuts and screws falling out along with our robot basically limping.
There is nothing against ramming into other bots. Damage is going to happen. Now, if they were ramming into you with the intention of destroying your robot that is different. However, most likely, they were simply playing defense. If you are mad kep-nuts fell off and your robot is limping, the best solution is quite simply building a sturdier robot. You can always anticipate tough defense. And the 5 second rule is for pinning, if your robot cannot move for more than 5 seconds due to contact from the other alliance that is illeagal.
In VEX V5 there is no real rule against ramming into another robot, so if your robot breaks, you can’t stop anything from doing that except for building your robot better. Even if you are first, you can always improve on the robot. If you are getting targeted, that is normal. Some teams even purposefully ruin a match because their sister team is on the other side. I understand your frustration, but it’s what you should expect from V5 and you should be prepared for the worst.
This happened to my team too, especially after the qualification rounds were over.
During the later matches robots would ram into each other so much and no one would do anything.
Our alliance team even had their entire robot flipped over onto its back by another robot and the refs did not care at all.
Hopefully they change the rules in later games to prevent this from happening to people’s robots.
Keps nuts aren’t the most durable solution for secured screws especially on a competition robot - use nylocks. As long as your drive is braced you also shouldn’t really got too much damage from ramming by another robot. Now none of us can really say if they “destroyed” your robot and if they really did the head ref would have called that. Otherwise I would recommend practicing against defense, maybe just not of that high of a level. As you get into higher level matches you will find that other teams will try to outscore you but also make it very difficult for you to score too.
There is nothing that is wrong with ramming your opponent. Doing it with the intention of damaging the robot is a violation though, yet that does not seem to be what has happened here. If you really do think something went wrong, you can talk to the refs, though I would not suggest fighting against them unnecessarily. Also, your coach seems to be correct. Less than 5 seconds is fine.
looking back at the match footage, we never played defence but as soon as driver control started, them and their alliance rammed into us? They immediately targeted us and after our robot broke they continued as their alliance scored. I understand our robot wasn’t the sturdiest but its structural integrity is good. Thats just something we need to improve on.
Would it count as intention if them and their ally started to ram into us as soon as driver control started? It was quite hard to get away with them coming at us from both sides even with omni wheels and 6 blue motors. Even after our robot was practically destroyed (intake cant work, drivetrain split in half, chains broke, C-channels hanging on by a screw) our sister team continued to ram into us while their alliance scored. They only rammed our ally when there was about 30 seconds left during the match
although I don’t think there’s anything we can do; it will be helpful to know for the future ^^
Thats cool and all, but they could have just been playing defense. If you show us the footage that could help.
I don’t know what ‘qualifies’ as intentional, so I would decide what seems like they meant to for myself if I were you. I’d suggest actually talking to the team themselves.
after hearing about the “they could’ve played defense” from multiple others; while to us it doesn’t seem like the case it could’ve probably been their intent. Its just harsh to think that a team could go so far in a defense when we couldn’t stand a chance; although I could be biased. I wish there were rules preventing it from happening but it seems that they’ve avoided every niche thing that could DQ. Thanks for the help, if I get a good video ill try to insert it