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Official Q&A: VIQC 2019-2020: Squared Away

Usage Guidelines All Questions

Students Part of Multiple Teams

Jon Kitagawa (Event Partner)
30-Aug-2019

Are students allowed to be members of multiple teams for building and programming of robots?

  1. Example 1: Student A has contributed to building a robot on TEAM01, but later int he season is moved to TEAM02 and then helps this team build. Student A only ever drives for TEAM01. Is this permitted?
  2. Example 2: Student A has contributed to building a robot on TEAM01 and has contributed programming a robot on TEAM02 throughout the season. Student A only ever drives for TEAM01. Is this permitted?
  3. Example 3: Student A has contributed to building a robot on TEAM01 and has contributed to programming a robot on TEAM02 throughout the season. Student A drives for TEAM01 at League event #1, then at drives for TEAM02 at League Event #2. Is this permitted?

The only rulings I can find that are restrictive are related to driving the robots for multiple teams but not about the designing and building aspects. <G6> Two Drivers per Team. Each Team shall include two Drivers. No Driver may fulfill this role for more than one Team at any given event, or in a given season. Teams with only one Student in attendance at an event are granted an allowance to use another qualified Driver from the event. That Driver may now only drive for the team the Driver is subsuming in for, for the duration of the event.

G6  
Answered by Game Design Committee

The first portion of G6 explicitly refers to Drivers. Drivers may only drive for one Team, and if a Driver switches Teams mid-season, then that switch is permanent.

The second portion of G6 continues beyond the portion that you have quoted, to state the following:

When a team qualifies for a Championship event (e.g., States, Nationals, Worlds, etc.) the Students on the team attending the Championship event are expected to be the Students on the Team that were awarded the spot. Students can be added as support to the team but should not be added as driveteam members or programmers for the team.

An exception is allowed if one (1) Student on the drive team or a programmer on the Team cannot attend the event. The team can make a single substitution of a drive team member or programmer for the Championship event with another Student, even if that Student has competed on a different team. This Student will now be on this new team and may not substitute back to the original team.

It is understood and expected that builders and programmers on Teams within the same "organization" (which is not a defined term in the VIQC Game Manual) will likely help each other to some degree. There are no rules prohibiting this.

G6 does not say that Students are not permitted to be a programmer for more than one Team. What it says is that if a Student is not the programmer for a Team that qualifies to a Championship, they cannot then join the Team as their programmer unless that Team's existing programmer cannot attend the Championship.

For example: Let's say that I program the robots for teams 123A and 123B. If either of these teams make it to States, then I can go to States with one or both of these teams. However, if I never helped the C team and only the C team goes to States, then I may not join this team to make them better at Programming unless the C-team programmer cannot make it, then and only then may I be that single substitution.

It is kind of like a trade deadline in professional sports. Once a Team gets to the point in the season where they have qualified to a Championship, then they can no longer adjust the key players on that team, including programmers. Drivers have an earlier "trade deadline" - they are locked into a Team as soon as they attend any official event. G6 has two separate, independent parts in this context - we will work to make this more clear in future seasons.