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rockhound wrote:So would carbonated water would be okay to use?

The rules do say "water", not "carbonated water" Again, my best guess is; it would be OK if you use only the properties of the water. If your usage depends on the C02, it would not. Judges could therefore automatically disallow it based on: "If you're not using the CO2, why use carbonated water?"

Any answer here can only be a guess. The only person who can answer this type of question with any degree of certainty is the one who will be judging you at your tournament.

Thank goodness New York's rule clarifications are explicit and non contradictory:

Nice!

About the rules . . .

I heard that this year a ball has to go up a conveyor belt (or something like that) and you get points for every second it stays on the conveyor belt. Is there a maximum amount of time that the conveyor belt can be moving (i.e a cap on how many points you can earn for that task)?

aubrey048 wrote:About the rules . . .

I heard that this year a ball has to go up a conveyor belt (or something like that) and you get points for every second it stays on the conveyor belt. Is there a maximum amount of time that the conveyor belt can be moving (i.e a cap on how many points you can earn for that task)?

There is a max in points that can be earned by the moving mass but not in the amount of time the moving mass moves.

I know this is not quite pertinent to the conversation at hand, but it merits some consideration in any case...

The way the rules read makes it more favorable to a competitor to enter the event with a device that is within specs, but has only two steps, and has a TSL that matches it!!!
I was up until 1 in the morning the night before the regional competition, which was yesterday, trying to make that darn machine work, but nothing aside from the mousetrap and the flag worked 100%. So, I tied the bar from the mousetrap to the pin holding the flag down, and called it a night after typing up a 2-step TSL. The result was 6th out of 10 teams (and a medal for it), because 1 was outside specs, another team entered a pineapple, and two teams' first actions set off their last action inadvertantly. So, for what it's worth, if you need to make a Mission Machine at the last minute, have less steps, make them work, be within specs, and have a TSL, because the rules favor procedure over being visually impressive. Thankfully...

I have a question:
My SO team is at my house right now and we are trying to figure out the monofilament task. It says in the instructions that the line breaking must release a mass, and we have it rigged so that the breaking of the line releases a depressed switch. I consider this "releasing a mass," but I'd really like to know for sure if this qualifies as performing the task correctly.
Any thoughts?

I suppose it depends really on the judge and their definition of "mass" (I guess you could even argue that the fishing line is a "mass", but not a smart idea), to be safe you could attach a really small weight to it just so you can point out where the mass just in case.

Our judges saw the fishing line as a mass.

rockhound wrote:

aubrey048 wrote:About the rules . . .

I heard that this year a ball has to go up a conveyor belt (or something like that) and you get points for every second it stays on the conveyor belt. Is there a maximum amount of time that the conveyor belt can be moving (i.e a cap on how many points you can earn for that task)?

There is a max in points that can be earned by the moving mass but not in the amount of time the moving mass moves.

I know you (aubrey) have probably already built/competed, but wanted to mention that yes, there is an internal bonus for getting this step to work for 30 seconds(I think that's what it is), but *in addition* there is the Ideal Time Bonus and for us this step is practically the only adjustable step among the MP Tasks. Oh, and that it doesn't have to be a conveyor belt.

Melkor6000 wrote:I know this is not quite pertinent to the conversation at hand, but it merits some consideration in any case...

The way the rules read makes it more favorable to a competitor to enter the event with a device that is within specs, but has only two steps, and has a TSL that matches it!!!
I was up until 1 in the morning the night before the regional competition, which was yesterday, trying to make that darn machine work, but nothing aside from the mousetrap and the flag worked 100%. So, I tied the bar from the mousetrap to the pin holding the flag down, and called it a night after typing up a 2-step TSL. The result was 6th out of 10 teams (and a medal for it), because 1 was outside specs, another team entered a pineapple, and two teams' first actions set off their last action inadvertantly. So, for what it's worth, if you need to make a Mission Machine at the last minute, have less steps, make them work, be within specs, and have a TSL, because the rules favor procedure over being visually impressive. Thankfully...

Oh YEAH, that is about where our MP event-team is at right now...fewer tasks that we know/think we can achieve, leave off the ones that are too hard for us/aren't consistently working. I don't care if it's only 2 or 3 or whatever...I want the blankin' thing to completely work every. single. time.