Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

Great game, because it forced you to choose between several successful design options. The point structure for options (discs, climb, pyramid discs) was well balanced.

Good call to change the HP throwing of white discs. I think this made a better game and a safer game.

Wild Card system that gives top teams from events a spot at the CHP.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

KOP vouchers rock, including the kit chassis in the system this year was a great choice. The reduction in waste and allowing teams more choices works.

The GDC hit the game out of the park. A diverse game that had many way to play that gave every team down to the most resource challenged a chance to be competitive.

Wildcards a good idea and a nice addition, just needs a little tweaking.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

Kit voucher was awesome, obviously.

And although we didn't use it, seeing the teams that did use it, the kitbot this year was REALLY REALLY REALLY good.

Love defining FP by perimeter, not dimensions

Awesome awesome game that made prethinking your overall strategy/approach to the game a difficult, intricate decision.

I'm sure there are plenty other positives I'll think of later.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

I also have to say this was the first year I actually regret having to leave St. Louis. The city put on a good show (no scare me to death weather events helped alot. The floods never affected me) and the event was great.
This was probably my favorite year I've ever had in FIRST.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

Game was great. There weren't any truly game-breaking strategies, and there was enough to do (and appropriate numbers of points to do each thing) that a team could be successful doing anything as long as they did it well.

Wildcard change was amazing. No more whiny threads of "BUT THEY ALREADY QUAAAAALIFIIIIEEED, THEY'RE JERKS FOR STEALING OUR SPOOOOOOOTS". I also noticed much more cheering for our local unstoppable robots at the regional I attended. probably because the horde of stoppable teams felt like they finally had a fair chance to qualify for championships.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

1) The game was awesome this year. I loved the variety of robot designs and strategies. I thought the discs was a really good game piece. It had really good flight characteristics and was very durable. I like that the GDC choose to have a large amount of dics and avoided having scored discs returned to the field. It really helped keep the flow of the game fast. I also like the ranking system was nice and simple. My team loves this game so much, we don't want to stop playing it. We are going to have to go to as many off season events as we can.
2) kit voucher: It was great to get exactly what we needed. It really reduced our budget this year
3) Motor variety: it seems there is a motor in the kit for any application you can think of.
4)I was really impressed by the lack of zero score matches. There was a big reduction in non-competative robots. I think a big thanks goes to the 3 day robot. It gave teams a template that they could start off of. It also gave many teams a standard of competitiveness. I think the whole field of robots are more competitive this year. It seemed the bell curve was smoothed out a bit.
5)FIRST's transparency this year made their decisions a lot clearer.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

The game. 'Nuff said.

The Coyotes and Theory 6 achieving their due respect north of the border was sweet.
Texas Torque had a great game and the coolest logo. I so want one of their shirts.

The only number one seed on Einstein was from the Curie division.
The Citrus Circuits got little respect but their scorched earth policy was validated.

Las Guerillas and Killer Bees had never allied together before this year. Mechanical Mayhem was finally noticed.

Code Orange, Sab-BOT-age, & TEST teams were brilliant in their upset on Newton.

The District model, it is where we are all headed.
We are starting it in New England next season.
Get used to it. 5 out of the 12 teams and Einstein were from the districts.
Teams will spend less money and get many more matches.
The opportunity for teams to refine their designs is invaluable.

The St. Louis Cardinals game on Friday night was wonderful. The rain held off and there were a lot of fireworks.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

The game this year was amazing!
The student ambassador-ing was well organized (though i dont have anything to compare it to)
The matches were relatively on schedule
LOTS of gp

and much more that im sure ill think of later

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

I'm mostly echoing other people, but these things were all such great things that I want to add my voice.

1) Amazing game that forced trade-offs and made us want alliances with different types of robots and allowed matches to play out in a variety of ways (contrast with 2011)

2) Transparency from Frank and quick responses to some concerns raised during the season - this has been great.

3) KoP vouchers and AndyMark voucher in particular were really great. Having choices is a very good thing since teams have different needs and different plans. FIRST Choice can be a very good thing as long as some common sense changes are put in place - please keep doing FIRST Choice.

4) Wild cards are great. I'd love to see this expanded a little bit to cover some situations when teams deserve a wildcard but don't get one.

5) Early availability of the Championship match schedule was great.

6) Apart from FIRST HQ stuff, we have great new robot COTS product offerings this year. VexPro's launch was great. I'm thrilled by the Talon and Victor 888. AndyMark has great new stuff (like 4" FIRST wheels) and lower prices. Options are up and costs are down, and competition is good for FRC teams.

7) Simpler bumper rules.

8) Pneumatic rules continue to gradually open up, after years of only being allows to use one certain component by one certain manufacturer.

9) Frame perimeter instead of 28x38 constraint has been great.

10) The ranking system makes sense and offers no bizarre incentives to score points for your opponents.

11) Running practice matches prior to Einstein was smart.

12) Getting information about what would be in the Kit of Parts before the season was helpful. And being able to order some of the materials before the season started was very nice. Having generally useful items on hand for the first day is great.

The southeast isn't big enough that the district system would work very well.

The volunteer section for Einstein was awesome.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

I have to say FIRST and the GDC really knocked the game out of the park this year. They created a game that fun to watch and encourages a variety of strategies. The game was made so that no team could full court, climb and dump, and 7 disk in auto. This made everybody's robots very different. Additionally, they made it fairly simple for a rookie team to score points by making the default shooter easy to do.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

More echoes...

+1 to the game being a really good one. I haven't seen this much strategy in what to build since... wait for it... 2004. (2007 comes close, though.)
+1 to Frank being, well, frank--if the reasoning is given, it's a lot easier to understand a "Why is this done this way, this is dumb" call.

The higher numbers were competitive in force this year. (1477 is now the highest numbered team to win Einstein, with 1241 as #2 on that list, as I recall.)

+1 to frame perimeter. Sometimes, you just have to think outside the box.

Not nearly as many threads complaining about "mentor-built robots" is a definite plus.

+1 to the wild-card system. Kinks? Sure. But it worked pretty well.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

-I like games with a high rate of fire so this game was very entertaining to watch.
-The game piece was different.
-The game was pretty easy to describe to people who were unfamiliar with FIRST
-There were multiple strategies that could prove to be very successful
-The game was balanced
-Karthik's seminar was amazing. I wish I didn't have to leave when he moved outside

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Positive
 

I love how the GDC managed to make a game that was challenging, but still allowed inexperienced teams to do well. I can't think of a game that would've been a better year for FIRST to blow up in Calgary.