FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedules
 

Taken from the FRC Blog, 4/22/13: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...atch-schedules

Preliminary!

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

**Disclaimer: I know they're preliminary**

I only see 8 matches per team in the qualification schedules. I thought they were aiming for 10.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Scout team, assemble! preliminarily

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Nice, sounds like these match schedules are permanent and here to stay! Nope, no possible changes can be made to these here schedules whatsoever.

/sarcasm

:) This is cool though, I know a lot of students and mentors who are going to lose sleep over this.

I am concerned about the number of matches though...

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

The whole first paragraph is awesome. Forwarding this on to my alumni.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Anybody else wondering what motivated them to release a (preliminary) match schedule? Like he said in the post there are a lot of things different about this year and this is the only one that surprises me. Although I am kind of glad to see that our first match is with 1114 (preliminary that is) ;)

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Anyone feel like doing an OPR based prediction? Our schedule does not look very favourable... :(

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Ugh! WHy do the champs need a practice schedule?
They should do it the MSC way and just do it on a first come/ first served basis.
It's alot easier than dealing with a filler line that will be backed up to the pits with inspected teams.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

My preliminary reaction is: 1 practice match and only 8 qualification matches? We only get to play 40% of the field during quals...

Last year they gave us 9 qualification matches with the same number of teams in each division.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I agree, 8 seems like a small amount of matches for each team. Lots of teams to fit in, but hard to seed well with only 8 matches.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Welcome to the traditional regional system, where my team pays $14k for the same number of qualification rounds Michigan teams get with $5k. The best part is when teams luck out so hard on schedules, they rank first without scoring any disc points.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

First off, let me state how absolutely awesome it is that the FRC staff released this preliminary schedule. This is a huge step. But now to the negative...

8 qualifying matches per team is simply unacceptable. FIRST has made huge strides over the past few years to get teams as many qualification matches as possible. This is a huge step backwards. Hopefully these schedules are preliminary and they find a way to squeeze in at least one extra match. I know there are many factors at play when it comes to scheduling, so I recognize there's no easy solution. But I also know that 8 matches in divisions of 99 teams, at a Championship level, is just not enough.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

In case anyone wants them in an excel format here's a link to all the matches* in a Google doc, Please don't edit this document if you want to edit it make a copy, or download it to excel

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...Wc&usp=sharing

*Practice matches not included

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Last year the cycle times between matches was *fast*. They could fit in more matches.

This year it is slower due to counting discs and belaying robots.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Now who is going to link this to Max or Avg OPR and get everyones ranking. Could even link in Auto OPR to get seeding right. Screw you work, not enough time to do this.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Qualification matches are schedule to end at 10:30. Could they squeeze in one more set and run up to noon?

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

The spectator schedule has alliance selections from 10:30-11, break for "an hour" then division matches go from 12-2:30 (of COURSE they will...).

What's really causing this is the equal team count of last year while adding a minute to the cycle time. Sounds silly, but that's over 2 hours of dead time you didn't get last year.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

The average cycle time in the schedule is approximately 7:32. Without adding any extra time to the schedule, they would need to turn 6:46 cycles to get an extra match in. Adding an extra 30 minutes to the schedule would mean you could get 9 matches by running a 7:00 cycle.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Here's a word cloud of the blog. It's interesting to see what words are used often and not used often.

8 matches should be interesting, and I dearly hope that that's the preliminary part of this schedule, and that they're trying desperately to fit in more matches. Even though my team isn't competing, I understand the stress it puts on a team to only have 8 matches to prove their worth, and how much every disc in autonomous will have to strike fast and hard. Floor pick ups can't afford to miss a disc in their 5-7-9 runs.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I always figured they could fit 9 matches into the schedule. I really don't understand why there is only 8.

I am a bit torn however because this current schedule is favorable to us.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I get 7:09 (you may have played through the dinner break on Thursday), so that would mean 6:23 cycles in your scheme (and no breathing room for handling unanticipated problems).

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I know last year at the MN State Championship we ran 6 minute cycle times. From what I saw this year, regionals were running approximately 8 minute cycle times (per the schedule), although from what I heard the fields were going "fast" and struggling to slow things down enough to match the schedule (and avoid having people upset that their match was half an hour earlier than the schedule said!). I think 7 minute cycle times are doable, but probably not 6.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I just did it for my team and came up with a 6-2 record (Not bad) though when ever I use OPR to scout I always say a match with in a technical foul worth of points are a toss up which takes my teams schedule to a 3-2-3

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I got 7 hours of play on Thursday, 2:20 on Friday morning, 5:15 on Friday afternoon, and 2:15 on Saturday morning. That's 16:50 total, meaning 1010 minutes. Dividing this by 134 matches gives 7.53 minute cycle times, which is approximately 7:32. Did I make a counting error?

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Saw your edit, you're right, I missed the Thursday dinner break.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

There is an hour dinner break on Thursday from 5:45 to 6:45. So 6 hours Thursday instead of 7.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I've added new columns to the spread sheet using each teams MAX OPR as displayed in Ed Law's sheet*.
Then summed the score for each alliance and displayed who would win based strictly on OPR.

Any recommendations for how to total the points that each team would receive and tally these other than by hand?

*Thanks for the data Ed!

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

8 matches is pretty disappointing - I was hoping they would keep divisions to <90 teams and run 10 matches. That would have been possible if they didn't use the waitlist, but I guess FIRST wanted the extra $200k.

Ran the numbers for Archimedes using "Max OPR" - here's what it spit out (no sorting for Auton). We have a fairly ugly schedule, so I'm selfishly hoping for a change.

8-0 Record

11
3314

7-1 Record

33
126
316
469
701
948
987
1100
1334
3310

6-2 Record

20
254
955
1519
1836
2137
2165
2468
2486
2959
3467
4450

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Did the same for Newton. No Auton sorting.:

8-0 Record
1538
1741

7-1 Record
79
128
180
195
829
1676
1985
2054
2252
2439

6-2 Record
68
131
225
1569
1640
1730
2612
2826
3931
3997

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Unfortunately, the OPRs listed on the this spreadsheet at the moment aren't quite right. In fact, according to Mathematica,

Union[N[Round[10 ToExpression[#]]/10] & /@
StringSplit["(*OPRs from spreadsheet with spaces added before -'s*)"]]

Every single team in Galileo has one of the following OPRs, and that's after 27 and 45 changed all of their OPRs to what I assume is the correct value.

{-15.3, -2.2, 20.1, 23.5, 33.3, 37.6, 56., 83.9}

I don't know enough of data management in Excel to conjure correct values at the moment, but I'm sure there are people that can help.

- Harrison

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

1986 is nowhere to be found.
This is surprising.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Yeah something seems off (though I could be reading this wrong), with 1986's matches. It shows 1986's OPR of 33.3156661987305.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...ip-we-hear-you

Another blog post.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

They've got some solid wins, and a few losses to stacked alliances, plus the tossups. They ended up 5-3 using Max OPR, which we all know isn't a fool-proof predictor.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Chief Delphi Thread for it: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh....php?p=1266290

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

They have a wicked schedule, I have them at 4-4 with OPR.

That being said, They are strong enough that OPR predictions mean a lot less than with other teams . They will most likely be at least 7-1, their 4th match will be tough.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Same exact thought...

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I'm also seeing problems in the spreadsheet with the OPR ratings being populated incorrectly via the look up function.

Our team (3824) is the very first team showing up on the Curie sheet, and it shows our OPR as -2.19 rather than 45.4. The 3 red teams for that first Curie match all show the exact same OPR. Looking at additional matches, a number of teams seem to have the same OPR ratings, like the -2.19.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I'm not sure what would be causing this. I'll look at it as soon as I get out of class and update it.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Thanks Pat. It seems to be occurring for many teams.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Write a macro :) You can also take a look at the formulas that MechEng83 used here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&postcount=105

I posted predicted rankings that take into account each team's auto, teleop, and climb points in each of the individual division threads.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Autonomous scoring is a rather crucial variable.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Sort the OPR page by team number, lowest first. Should fix it.

VLOOKUP likes sorted search fields. :)

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Using MechEng83's spreadsheet (with some expansion), max OPR data from Ed Law and autonomous OPR data from 1114, here's what I got for Curie:

EDIT: I used max auto OPR to mirror the use of max OPR to decide match outcomes. Joe Ross has another version here.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

It should all be up to date, if anyone sees any issues point them out.
Thanks to Brian (TheLucas) for the help.
If anyone wants anything added send a suggestion my way and i'll see what I can do.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I don't post often on ChiefDelphi; many of the good - scratch that - great decisions by the staff at FIRST that have transpired during this season go without comment from me. I should be better about showing my appreciation. FIRST has continued to operate and grow an incredible system that has had a life changing effect on myself and the large number of students, parents, and mentors of our program.

I feel strongly that guaranteeing teams only eight matches at the Championship event is an injustice to the hard work that so many individuals have put in over the last four months.

Teams travel across the country and the world to come to this event. Two minutes and fifteen seconds doesn't seem like a lot on paper but it means an incredible amount to every member of a FIRST team. Feedback from teams at regionals always addresses the desire to play more matches. Fans of the district system always cite that the events are great because they get more guaranteed matches.

I remember back in 2009 when teams only got 7 chances to play on the field at the big event and it wasn't a great time. The opportunities were limited, it was unfulfilling, and there was a general displeasure. The community gave feedback and the team at FIRST listened. In 2010 and 2011 we were welcomed with 10 matches at championships. I personally remember the rejoicing from the community over the schedule. In 2012 championship grew and FIRST told us - and explained to us - that they needed to cut it down to just 9 matches, but they made a valiant effort at expanding the schedule and I feel that the community understood.

Now what is happening? Why did we take a step backwards? Frank made a great point in his latest blog post that the FMS is connecting faster than ever and thats why the staff feels comfortable accelerating the practice field timing. Do we have a lack of volunteers? What would it take to add another round of matches? I'm not a mathematician but it appears that Karthik's suggestion of turn-around-time could do the job and closely matches the turn-around-times of the three regionals around the country that I attended. I would venture to say that the robots should move on and off the field faster at championships when compared to the regionals. Do we need to make it clearer and put a stronger burden of urgency on to teams for moving the robot to and from the cart?

What I'm asking here is that the crew at FIRST takes another look at the scheduling. If its all we can do to have 8 matches per team then so be it. But myself and I'm sure many others in the community would appreciate the second look at increasing the number of matches to at least the number we had last year in St Louis.

-Mason

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I'm with Mason and Karthik on this one.
7 matches in the past was unacceptable.
10 was great!
And now, we are down to 8?

If the Championship requires that 100 teams per division is warranted, then its about time the event became 4 full days instead of 3.XX .

With workshop sessions, non-robot activities, educational/vendor booths, and FLL, participants need more time to enjoy the event.

-Glenn

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

And at the same time, students need less time out of school, and mentors less time out of work. As it is, going to champs for most people is a full 3 days out of school/work. Add in a regional and it's another 2 days. Add in a second regional for many teams, and it's another two days, all in the span of 2 months (5-7 days off out of 40 days worked in 8 weeks). That's a lot of school to be missing, and I know it doesn't make my manager too happy (but since the company sponsors FIRST and my team, he has to let me take the time for it).

I'm hopeful that FIRST has grown to the point that next year, when we change venue for champs, we have some place even better that allows us 8 divisions instead of 4, so we can include even more teams while still providing more matches!

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

It's worth mentioning that in Maine (week 6), we were consistently running 20-30 minutes ahead of schedule on a 7 minute cycle time. I think at championships, a 6.5 minute cycle time should be feasible.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I hate to be the guy to tell you this but if you look Here you will see that we are still in St. Louis next year.

Just look at the bottom after the divisions

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

If FIRST went to 8 divisions they'd just invite 800 teams. They're not going to shrink the divisions.
Personally I think FIRST should dump the practice matches and just get down to business.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

The problem is that the divisions are just to big. With 100 teams even if each team gets 12 matches the luck of the draw will have a major impact on rankings.

The only real way is to make a difference is to make the divisions smaller.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I am also quite disappointed that we only get eight qualification matches.

Both of the regionals I attended ran ahead of schedule, and at both events we ended up watching chicken dance, etc for a pretty decent stretch as the staff wasted time* to get us back on schedule. These were at regionals where the vast majority of teams hadn't been to a previous event. I really don't think it's necessary to be conservative about the time between matches at a championship where everyone has already gotten their robot to connect to the FMS at a previous event, and where we have lots of expert volunteers.

More matches should be a top priority. I'm with Mason - tell us what you need to make more matches happen and I'm sure you'll have some cooperative FIRST students, mentors, and volunteers ready to get us there.

*It's not a knock on the staff at those events, by the way. They were running ahead of schedule, after all.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

That practice match time is important; at least three very valuable things (besides teams being able to actually practice) happen then:
1) Teams that can't come on Wednesday get time to unpack & prepare their robot.
2) Field connections happen and (hopefully) the bugs get worked out
3) Time to inspect

Even though teams have already been to one or more events, we always still find problems during inspections. And even if we don't, it takes more than a few hours to get to each of 100 robots.

We need more matches; 8 isn't enough. I don't think increasing the # of days for CMP is feasible; we're already taking a lot of time off from school & work. Plus, I suspect that none of us really want to know how much it costs per day to be at the venue. I really like this year's game, except for the amount of work it takes to score & reset the field. I think the only way we're going to get more matches is shorter cycle times; either the GDP designs a game with that in mind or we find a way to speed up the field reset crew. Do NOT take this as a dig at the volunteers; they're great.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

All those crying that its too much time off work/school, what about that other day, currently AFTER the event? I never understood FIRSTs aversion to playing on Sundays, when it would make it so much less stressful on the teams.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Sunday is getaway day.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

From this comment am I correct in assuming that your employer gives you time off for the events? My employer does not, so any extra days creates problems for me. Playing on Sunday would most likely require an extra day off travel for most people.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Students, mentors, and volunteers all need Sunday to recover/travel.


There need to be fewer teams or more divisions like at VRC World Championship.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

The size difference of the fields for FRc and Vex are significant. You can't compare the two.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I don't think they would double the team count if they ever added more divisions. I mean, 100 teams/division wasn't even a thing until last year, and in years prior I believe it was 90 teams/division.

But then again, I thought they would have stopped pulling off the waitlist at 378 teams to make 4-94 team divisions, but I guess getting registration money was a priority or something.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Or FIRST wanted more teams to play.
I'd like to think FIRST hasn't completely transformed into a money hungry self serving corporation. I'd like to think they actually still think they care about us.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

If the goal of FIRST is to inspire students and the Championship event accomplishes this goal, then why not invite more teams to the event if you can? The more teams you have, the more students that get inspired.

I'd like to think this too.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Don't you have to travel home? It's actually better for a lot of jobs to take time off in a block, so travelling on Monday might even be worse than starting the event earlier in the week. Plus there's recovery time, especially for us older folks. :)

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

It's all about inspiration until people start complaining about teams getting lucky schedules and seeding first.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

The problem is that by overpopulating divisions, the teams that actually qualified get a lower quality event. There is a higher chance of a bad 1-8 seed captain that got a lucky schedule. We should be celebrating and inspiring excellence as a culture, not luck.

At least for the students and mentors on 11, we would much rather be beaten by a team that was better than us than by a team that was luckier than us. Relying on luck and losing is discouraging, not inspiring. Likewise, relying on luck and winning is less inspiring than winning based on ability and motivation to succeed.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

This

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

My comment was partly aimed at the regionals too though.

My employer does NOT give me all the time off work; I wish. I have successfully convinced him that it is a worthwhile investment for him to give me two days (one regional) off to volunteer.

Living in a region with 5 easily accessible, and a couple more less easily accessible events (NYRO, ONTO, QCMO, ONWA, ONTO2, MICMP), I would love to be able to watch more of the events. If they were Fri/Sat/Sun instead of Thu/Fri/Sat, I'd be able to watch the important parts (and be with my teams) without needing to take extra days off work.

It might not be the solution for CMP, due to the excessive distance for many teams making the travel/recovery day necessary, but I think it would be good for the regionals. Seems like they're starting to try it with some events (CVR and some of the districts this year)

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

As important as the discussion is about the future size of the Championship, it's distracting from the issue at hand. As it stands right now, we have a preliminary match schedule where teams only have 8 qualifying matches. This is simply not enough. What can we do get teams an extra match, putting us back at the standard we were at in 2012?

We have reports from regionals where they were able to consistently turn sub 7:00 cycles. So consider this option. 9 matches at a 6:45 cycle.

This means:

9 matches * 99 teams = 891 plays
891 plays / 6 teams per match = 148.5 matches --> 149 with three surrogate teams
149 matches * 6:45 cycle = 1005.75 minutes (Round to 1006)

The current match schedule has 960 minutes of playtime. 1006 - 960 = 46 minutes that need to be added to the schedule to achieve a 6:45 cycle with 9 matches per team.

This would require 1006 minutes of play time, which is 46 more minutes than we have right now. Where can we find this time?

- Start qualification matches at 12:45p instead of 1:00p on Thursday = 15 minutes
- End qualification matches at 8:15p instead of 8:00p on Thursday = 15 minutes
- End lunch at 12:45 instead of 1:00p on Friday = 15 minutes
- End qualification matches at 6:30p instead of 6:15p on Thursday = 15 minutes

That would give us 60 extra minutes in the schedule, meaning 1020 minutes of playtime, allowing for a cycle of 6:51. This is definitely doable. Yes, it will be a rushed pace, but I think the teams are up for it. If the issue is that FIRST needs more volunteers, let us know. I'll personally march through the pits on Thursday morning and recruit extra volunteers for you, if it means we get an extra match. I know some of my friends will do the same. Heck, I bet you I can get at least 50 extra volunteers just from the attendees of my seminar on Wednesday night. Let's all work together to make sure all teams get the most bang for their buck this week! FIRST has been doing an amazing job of making things more team centric over the past year, I have complete faith that they'll make the right decision here and get us more qualifying matches.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

This is obvious, I stated both to show which option is easier to execute. Cutting down number of teams vs increasing number of fields. One is easy to change.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Certainly looking to the future, it means that FIRST should design games that don't require 7-10 minutes between them for reliable reset times.

Design the games to a 5 minute reset time. That way, there is some wiggle room for problems like these.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

This sounds doable. And the championship usually has the top level volunteers that serve FIRST (at least at the key positions) so I think the turnaround times can be done.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I've already volunteered for just Thursday and got turned away*, if it meant more matches I'd add volunteering Friday as well.


*I couldn't meet the time commitment of position given to me they didn't actually say no

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I was one of the FTAA's at the Colorado Regional a couple of weeks ago, and we were consistently turning 6 minute match cycles - when there were no 30 point climbs. If there was a robot that needed to be belayed off the pyramid, the cycle for that match became 8-9 minutes due to the time required to safely get it down. While we were able to keep a 7 minute schedule going for most of the weekend, we only had 5 or so 30-point climbers in a field of 48 team, or around 10% of the field

I believe FIRST's primary concern about decreasing the cycle time is that the very thing that causes the largest delay in match times is also the thing that requires the most care and attention from everybody involved. With this being the Championship, there are probably more than 10 30-point climbers in each division, and that will slow down the cycles even further, making it extremely difficult to hold to a 7 minute schedule.

Having said all of that, I personally agree that 8 matches is not enough, and I have thought for years now that we need smaller divisions to create a fairer schedule. And I hope that FIRST tries to find a way to get every team 9 matches this year, because after attending 2009's Championship I don't want things to go back to that level. But if the decision is to hold 8 matches per team and safely get every robot on and off the field or hold 9 matches per team and risk injuring either a team member or a robot in the process, then 8 matches is the right thing to do.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I believe there are less than 10 30 point climbers in Newton, I'd have to check my preliminary scouting to confirm but I'm pretty sure its less than 10. I don't know how many are in the other divisions but I would guess that there are less than 15 in each division.

To put some data behind it, say there was 15 teams in a division that can climb to 30 that comes out to 1 every ~9 matches which really isn't that bad and shouldn't slow down the event that much if at all. At a match in Wisconsin we had 4 30 point climbers and all 4 climbed to 30 and it didn't take more than an extra 2-3 min to get all 4 down. This is Champs they have had 7 weeks to train the correct people on how to use the belay system quickly and safely enough to get robots down to keep to a schedule. I'm sure there will be enough people to help get the robots down fast to get us at least 1 more match per team.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

I think most people would be all for a 45 min lunch over an hour if it means more matches. Usually with where a teams matches land they will usually have around an hour or more gap for lunch, with a 45 min core time. This would just be harder on the volunteers since they would only have 45 min, which would be closer to probably 30 min.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Is there a character limit to the Q&A? It closes tomorrow. We won't get an answer before champs, but it would be nice to see some justification from HQ as to why this isn't a thing.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Not only would more volunteers help here but teams show up early for your matches! This is only a preliminary schedule, if were running ahead on Thursday FIRST may realize that this turn around time is too much and add some more matches on Friday. Don't be that team that refuses to show up until the time printed on that schedule.

As a team do everything you can to help speed this schedule up.
Without breaking any rules or causing dangerous situations

Show up early for matches.
If your a 30pt climber know what needs to be done to get your robot down and help the field staff do it, as is appropriate.
Don't wait till the last second to turn your robot on, be ready to go early.

This isn't anyone's first competition, work efficiently

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

If I still see teams doing this at world like I did at regional events I'm going to lose my mind.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

For the amount of time, effort and money, eight matches is a kick in the groin. I could go the whole weekend without the music/dance time wasters.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Especially when you have to stay up in the stands to dance.

Why not start earlier on Friday (8 AM) and cut the 1 hour opening ceremony down to 45 minutes? So quals would start at 8:45 instead of 9:30? They start at 8:15 on Saturday... Add that to 15 minute shorter lunches, and you have plenty of time.

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

We'll be right there with you guys if we need to make this happen.

I'll add to this discussion as well. With only ~100 teams making eliminations out of 400 attending, we should be doing everything in our power to squeeze out more matches for teams. St. Louis is a long way to travel for almost everyone attending. Tons of time and effort and money go into getting that far, and while we don't JUST come to compete on the field, it is certainly a key part of it.

I hope FIRST goes the extra mile and squeezes another match out for teams.

-Brando

Re: FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedu
 

Word on the street is the official match schedules are identical to the preliminaries.