Are 8 play regional reasonable?

[Isaac Ash]

I admit that I'm giving arguments that go against something that I personally believe: playing more matches is an appropriate goal. But I don't think I'm doing it just for the sake of arguing. I am honestly trying to answer people who seem to be asking why everyone else doesn't wholeheartedly agree that an 8-match schedule is a priori unacceptable.

Alan,

I appreciate you playing devil's advocate on the issue. I think this thread has made the benefits of more matches for more successful teams clear already, but there are a couple of reasons that struggling teams could also be motivated by playing more matches:

1. They are more likely to win and play with good teams. For some teams, just winning a match, even if they are contributing marginally, can be a great confidence booster. There was a rookie toaster-bot in Iowa who must have gone 2-8 or so, but every time they won a match their drive team was elated. By this same token, playing with a good team can help a robot contribute to a greater accomplishment than they would achieve on their own. If a team can only score one low goal in match, it's going to be much more exciting for students to see that boulder be the final one needed to capture the tower, than to be the only boulder scored in a match with two tortuga'd alliance members. At 10K Lakes, there were only about 3 really good robots, making it hard for the other 60 teams to get in matches with them.

2. They are more likely to have a mechanism work. There are some robot add-ons that need to have the stars align in order to work. There isn't necessarily a good fix for it in the pits, some teams just build mechanisms that need to have some luck involved to work (i.e. making the tolerances too small, or using pneumatics that are too weak to work reliably). My team's climber only worked once throughout the entire 10K lakes regional, but when it did, it was an incredibly exciting and inspiring moment for the team, and especially for those who had spent the most time on it.

And going the extra step to districts would obviously help, as there is clear data to show that scores rise at a team's second event.

I understand that it is incredibly difficult to free up time/space for more matches in MN right now, but saying that struggling teams would actually prefer having fewer matches is absolutely ridiculous. You can't give teams improper resources to succeed and grow (which is what's perpetuated with the 8-plays-a-season super regionals), and then use their lack of success as an excuse to continue those same practices.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

We had 26 rookies in Australia.

Issac, I have teams who came to their event hoping only to be able to drive. Their goal was to get on the field and when they did that they celebrated. We, of course, want more but we build on the accomplishments that are achieved. Many of those teams do exactly that. I did have one team that won the first match they played and decided to go out and have a big lunch to celebrate. They missed their next match. They only had red bumpers built and were working on the blue set, but as luck would have it, they only had red matches all day on Friday.

[Mr V]

As an example, the 8" bumper rule has been really rough this year, but what can we do other than repeat the rule in such a video? If someone didn't understand it while reading the rules during the season, they won't understand it while having the rule read to them.


Just an aside, the 8" bumper rule is, quite possibly, the most horribly communicated, critical-to-design rule in the entire game manual. Pains me to see so many rookies miss this mark.

I'm sure someone in this thread will just tell me to suggest a better a way to communicate it. Or if I care so much about it, to do it myself.

Alas, the internet.

-Mike

In the PNW District we were blessed that Frank Merrick attended the DCMP. I took the opportunity to discuss the problems that we experienced with the 8" min bumper width rule this season. We came to an agreement that part of the problem is that the person writing the rules knows what they are trying to communicate and thus they are highly predisposed to read what they have written as clearly communicating the idea. That is because they know what they are trying to communicate and thus read into the words the intention behind the rules, that is present in their mind.

So I agree that reading the rules word for word will not do anything to make it clear to person who doesn't understand them by reading it themselves, because they don't have their own knowledge on what the intention was.

I do believe that a video that showed what defines a "side" and more importantly for this season a segment of a "side" if done properly, could go a long way to furthering the understanding of the rules by everyone.

A great example was with a team I saw at an event this season. Their mentor's argument was that there is no magic number that defines what creates a bumper that provides adequate protection. Their Robot had ~6" bumpers and they covered the full length of both frame segments on the front of their Robot. Extending the bumpers 2" in the direction of the center of the robot on both sides would have meant that they had an opening smaller than the diameter of the ball. So the conversation quickly turned to "making our bumpers wider will make our robot useless, so maybe we should just go home". (not the only time I heard that argument this season)

Once I explained to him that I agreed that their bumpers fully protected their robot, BUT that the 8" bumper width was created in part to make teams decide on the trade offs of their choice of robot size. Fact is that on the one hand you want as wide of an opening as possible to make it easier to acquire a ball without the need for perfect alignment, but on the other hand you want as narrow of a robot as possible to make fitting through the defense dividers and to fit on the batter/scale w/o interference from the batter dividers or an adjacent scaling robot, without perfect alignment, he accepted it. We then went to work creating a plan for a robot that was wider at the front that it was at the back to meet the rules.

Now to be frank I don't know for certain if that was the intention of the people who wrote the rules, but it did work to diffuse the situation and move from "you are making our robot worthless", to accepting my idea to increase the width of the front of the robot to be within the rules and still be able to intake a ball with their current opening and intake system.

So adding a little more explanation of the intention of the rules would also help to ensure that the reader fully understands what is required to be compliant with the rule.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Once I explained to him that I agreed that their bumpers fully protected their robot, BUT that the 8" bumper width was created in part to make teams decide on the trade offs of their choice of robot size.
This was in part a design challenge to make you think about picking up boulders and adjusting your frame opening accordingly. However, this is not the first year that 8" segments were the rule.

[Jon Stratis]

I don't help write the rules, so I can't know for sure... But I've always been under the impression that 8" was used to accommodate 4 digit team numbers. 8" plus 3.25" from having a noodle in the corner is enough room at a common font to fit a max sized team number (and many teams I see do fill the space on the bumper entirely with their number). This came from several years ago when they first introduced the 8" rule, and that year splitting team numbers was prohibited (which was also a headache to explain to some teams).

And as you said, it does help to force design tradeoffs, and encourage critical thinking about the game challenge.

[youngace89]

My team's climber only worked once throughout the entire 10K lakes regional, but when it did, it was an incredibly exciting and inspiring moment for the team, and especially for those who had spent the most time on it.


Although I didn't build the climber, I would say that most of that excitement resulted from that climb coming in our first semifinal game, which we won by 10 points and would have lost based on the auto points tiebreaker had we not climbed.

I'll use that to transition to my main point here, which is that more matches are better... especially if they are elim matches. The greatest perk of a smaller event, in my opinion, is that a higher percentage of teams will make elims and have the chance to play a part in more meaningful games. Even if they lose in the quarterfinals, they certainly will have a greater sense of accomplishment resulting from at least playing a part in the most exciting and talked about part of the events, and they will have had a chance to work more closely with their elims partners than their quals partners.

Additionally, with fewer teams there will be more excitement for those who don't get picked. At a 40-team event only 16 teams don't get picked, so almost everyone is either in or on the brink of getting in. As a team looking forward, I would much rather see an event where more than half of all teams made it to elims than a 60-team sea of robots to be lost in.

This doesn't even have to happen at a real event. Increasing the number of offseason events will increase the likelihood that a given team makes it into elims at least once, which hopefully could give less fortunate teams a point to rally around, and validation that they were an important part of an event.

[Richard Wallace]

One simple change of nomenclature would help teams understand the bumper rules more easily: stop calling the measurement FRAME PERIMETER. Call it something else, without the word "frame".

Maybe GIRTH. Or CONVEX PERIMETER. Either of these would remove the ambiguity behind many teams' misinterpretation of the bumper rules; i.e., they are mis-led by poor nomenclature, and believe the edges of their frame on either side of the robot's intake slot are "sides", which can be protected by bumper segments along their entire length if that is less than 8 inches.

----

My apologies -- this should be in a separate thread. I agree that bumper rules in games with floor level ball intake are a repeating issue for teams and inspectors. Some of the more difficult examples I saw this season were not on rookie robots.

[GaryVoshol]

(BTW Michigan is larger than Minnesota in area)Only if you include the water.

But with a chokepoint at the Mackinac Bridge, it's likely that maximum travel distances in MI are at least as great as those in MN.

[Richard Wallace]

Only if you include the water.

But with a chokepoint at the Mackinac Bridge, it's likely that maximum travel distances in MI are at least as great as those in MN.I think the more interesting statistical comparison is population per square mile of land area:


Michigan 174.8, Minnesota 66.6. (Michigan's population is 86% higher than Minnesota's.)


Minnesota will have a harder time putting districts within easy driving distance of the rural population.

[MrRoboSteve]

A picture is worth 1000 words.

20584

Edit: Well, two pictures.

20585

[northstardon]

I think the more interesting statistical comparison is population per square mile of land area:


Michigan 174.8, Minnesota 66.6. (Michigan's population is 86% higher than Minnesota's.)


Minnesota will have a harder time putting districts within easy driving distance of the rural population.

From what I can tell from the MI FIRST web site, there's one district that covers all of the Upper Peninsula, with district events in Escanaba and Soo St. Marie. And one other district that covers the rest of Northern Michigan, with events in Sterling and Midland...is this true? If so, then I wouldn't think that the driving distance would be all that different for rural MN districts.

Escanaba (pop. 12,562) is also potentially instructive for the question of whether there are cities spread across the state that have enough hotel rooms to support a district event. I counted 19 hotels/motels on their tourism web site...this is probably a higher per capita room count due to it being a vacation destination. But that's not unlike some Minnesota cities in Greater Minnesota. Brainerd, for example, has only 13,500 year-round residents, but more lodging options than you can shake a joy stick at.

Driving to district events on two-lane roads during the winter is indeed something to consider. Then again, there are probably a couple of hundred youth hockey tournaments across Minnesota each year, and plenty of Minnesota parents who have experience driving on snow-packed roads to those rural tournament towns. :)

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Sending a video like that with the inspection sheet a week before bag (if it can be made available that early) to teams could help them catch problems they might not have seen until then.

Imagine a field tour video but of a robot going through inspection.

Brendan,
I start working on the Inspection Checklist almost at kickoff and we post it as soon as possible. It was available on line by the second week of February this year if I remember correctly. I want teams to check it before it goes in the bag. Bumpers should not be as big a problem as they have been especially since I moved bumpers out of the bag many years ago. Teams can work on bumpers right up to competition.

Don,
Brainerd does have a lot of hotel space but many are only open seasonally. They don't have the staff during the winter to stay open. (My sister in law lives in Nisswa just up the road.)

[ehochstein]

Brainerd does have a lot of hotel space but many are only open seasonally. They don't have the staff during the winter to stay open. (My sister in law lives in Nisswa just up the road.)

About half of my family lives in the Brainerd/Baxter area (I even have a cousin on FRC 2503!) and a few of my cousins work or have worked in the hotel industry up there. 10 years ago, I would completely agree with you, there wouldn't be enough hotel space for an event in the late winter. However, the whole Brainerd/Baxter area has really exploded in growth over the past few years and the family who works in the area says that the major hotel chains do remain fully functional throughout winter. That of course doesn't mean there wouldn't be challenges but I wouldn't count it out on hotel space.

Having an event in Brainerd would give me an excuse to go visit my family during build/competition season. Some have even resorted to volunteering at competitions with me, just to see me :P (which I wouldn't consider a bad thing...)