I was wondering when a cube stack is officially scored? Does the cube stack have to have the base cube contacting the floor tile and nothing else, or is it scored in the goal zone if the robot is still touching the stack and the base cubed is contacting the floor tile. Essentially what I am asking is if an opposing robot places a stack of cubes in a goal zone and you hit them before their robot has released the stack, do you get disqualified?
Yes because they would be in their protected zone and you cannot touch them when they’re in there
what about the goal zone that isn’t in the protected zone?
you are not to knock over opposing stacks.
That’s what I was thinking. I think they would consider you using another robot to knock over a stack an extent of your own robot making the action of knocking the cubes over even when they aren’t scored illegal.
(don’t read this, see my edit at the bottom instead)
According to SG3 (which is a very difficult rule to copy and paste, find it in the manual please), you cannot directly or indirectly contact any of their scored cubes <SG3B>. You especially cannot “descore” them <SG3F>. The definition of a scored cube technically only applies at the end of a match, and while this is obviously a simple semantic issue, it does leave some doubt as to what would count as scored during a match (specifically, I would suspect, the ‘not contacting’ rule). Until we have official clarification (I don’t believe we do yet- someone please correct me if I am mistaken) this answer is speculative.
Going by what the rule currently says, and ignoring the “end of the match” portion, a scored cube must
.
not be contacting a robot of the same alliance colors as the goal zone
and
meet the criteria of being either a Base Cube or a Stacked Cube
If either of these conditions are not met, you may knock the stack over. You must keep in mind however, that this applies on a per-cube basis. If you descore cubes that are, for instance, below their gripping point, the interaction is illegal. Also remember that you cannot contact an opposing robot in their protected zone, so as you said, this would only work in the non-protected goal. Additionally, the moment the opponent is no longer touching the stack it is considered scored, and you may not cause any of the cones to be considered “not scored,” directly or indirectly. This would include forcing the opponent’s robot to contact the stack. If during the interaction you incidentally force them to touch cubes that are already scored, you are violative SG3 case B, and, depending on the specifics of being considered scored during a match, case F, which results in an unconditional disqualification.
In other words, probably don’t try it.
(If I made any mistakes interpreting the rules here, somebody please correct me. The last thing I want to do is spread misinformation)
EDIT: John Tyler’s answer is much better and more accurate, I misinterpreted what SG3 referred to. I may want to delete this in order to avoid confusion, but I’ll leave it for now to provide context
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That makes a lot of sense. Now I guess we just wait for someone who works at vex to respond or a rule update. If neither come I’ll probably ask during drivers meeting
Scored Cubes are treated differently between the protected goal zone and the unprotected one. The scenario you talked about, though, where the robot has not yet put the cubes down to score them, is fairly clear cut: do whatever, as there’s no infraction possible until they’re scored.
Contacting the unprotected goal zone and barrier is a violation of <SG3d>, which carries no automatic DQ, and contacting cubes within it is a violation of <SG3b>, which is also an at-the-referees-discretion penalty. You could conceivably knock over a cube or two in the unprotected goal zone and not get DQ’d if the referee found it to not be match affecting.
Luckily, the nasty automatic DQs only apply to sections E, F, and G, none of which can be violated at the unprotected goal zone.
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