Another Design Bites the Dust

By Ethan

Task: Discuss a new rule change

At one point, we were thinking about creating a "mining facility" robot that stays static within the crater and delivers the blocks into the mining depot. In our eyes, it was legal as it would hold as many blocks as possible inside the crater but only deliver two at a time outside. It would be super-efficient as we would be able to stay within the crater, and not need to move.

However, fate has struck. Earlier this week, we received this message:

The rule limiting control/possession limits of minerals has been updated to indicate that robots may _temporarily_ hold more than 2 minerals in the crater, but must shed any excess over prior to performing any other gameplay activities (which would include scoring).
says that "Robots In a Crater are not eligible to Score Minerals". Per the definitions of "In" and "Crater", if _any_ portion of a Robot is in the vertical area above the crater (extending from the field walls to the outside edge of the Crater Rim), then scoring a Mineral results in a Major Penalty.
says that Robots may not obstruct another Robot's path of travel in the area between the Lander and a Crater for more than 5 seconds.

This means that we couldn't do a static mining facility as we cannot score within the crater. Since we'd have a portion of the robot always in the crater, the existence of our robot would be a major penalty.

Next Steps

So, we need to rethink our robot. We still want to create a semi-static robot, but we need to redesign the intake portion.