Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

You may have heard the rumors about New England moving to a “District Model” for the FIRST Robotics Competition… Well, we are going to make it official: The six states of New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont) have organized into the New England Region and will be implementing the District Model for this coming 2014 FRC season.

We are very excited about this transition and all the great things this brings to our New England FRC teams.

Read more on nefirst.org and follow NE FIRST on Facebook.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

This is how I sum up this news: http://youtu.be/VbxgYlcNxE8?t=13m59s

Now just waiting on NY....

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Congrats, guys! Welcome to the District Model. Paraphrasing Woodie, you're in for a new iteration of the hardest fun you'll ever have. :)

I'm intrigued by the setup of ingenuityNE vs NE FIRST. I can't tell from the description--is this essentially the FiM/MAR setup, or have you adapted it? If so, how and why so?


Best of luck, NE! Remember you've always got district veterans in reach if you'd like (especially for the sure-to-be-interesting first year).

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Farewell New England. We hope one day we may once again be able to compete with one another.
But seriously, good luck NE. Come visit the Tech Valley Regional if you get bored of district play! :D

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

I'm glad to hear that this is official now.

Since it isn't mentioned on the nefirst site yet and I can't log in to the site from work I just wanted to ask here has the number of district events had been finalized?

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Actually they did say it in an earlier nefirst.org blog post.

Anyways, I am extremely excited for this transition. There are a lot of this I am going to miss (the big one being the Boston regional), but it is definitely a change for the better.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

9 District events plus 1 District CMP.

Sites and dates will be released shortly, not all venues are under contract yet.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Thanks for the info.

I had a feeling negotiations were still under way so I didn't want to ask location. (I have a good idea of the breakdown by state based on team concentration maps I've seen.)

Knowing the number of events is helpful though.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Can't wait to experience these districts as a college student/my first events in New England!

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Love this!

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

To all NEFIRST teams: Be sure to give very serious consideration in your 2014 design to durability and repairability. Now your robot will have to endure at least two events, possibly 3 or, if you make it to STL, 4 and a half. All with more matches than usual.

The robots you used to build might just fall apart, so think Robust.

I think you will really like the district model.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

I agree with Don. Plan on making it to Worlds and plan on doing 60+ matches with your bot.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Yes - also think about maintenance. Not only are there more matches in districts, there's less time between them. It's not actually true, but think perpetual quarterfinals. It's definitely a change! You do (presumably) get unbag time at home, though.

You'll grow love it, don't worry. ;)

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

From ingenuityNE (our new Overlords)

There are still many details to be worked out, but this is what we can share right now. We will have a total of 9 District Qualifying Events throughout New England 2 in New Hampshire, 1 in Maine, 2 in Massachusetts, 1 in Rhode Island and 3 in Connecticut. Teams will play in two of these events, collect points from both on- field play as well as awards and the top teams will then have the opportunity to play at the Region Championship to be held at the Agannis Arena in Boston. Teams from the New England Championship will then qualify for the FIRST Championship in St. Louis. We in the process of finalizing contracts and as soon as we do, we will share the locations of the District Qualifying Events.

This is our future.
Let's make it work.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Interesting choice of Boston for District Champs, How many teams can the Agannis hold? I personally loved Boston when my team went there in 2012 but I'm having trouble remembering how much space there was.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Last year's Boston Regional had an open capacity of 52 teams (according to FIRST's website), but the previous years had up to 53 teams.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Hmm... so either they will have to have the District Championship be a fair bit smaller than initial hopes, or they plan to somehow house another 10-20 teams...

Boston seems like a reasonable location. Ideally it'd be closer to Connecticut though... I'm sure there'll be a significant contingent coming from CT who would all be well out of "daily-commute" range. That said, even teams that do live in the 30-60 miles range will have to consider whether or not they want to fight there way into Boston on Thursday and Friday morning...

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

MAR Championships this year(and next year) is ~1 hour away for most teams, to put things into comparison.

And in regards to team numbers, in FiM last year, there were 207 teams registered. Of those 207 teams, there were 64 region championship spots, meaning 31% of teams made it the region championship. In MAR last year, there were 110 team registered with a total of 50 teams registered, so 45% of teams making it.

In New England(data taken from this map, there are 151 teams currently in NE, so 53 teams at Region Championship would be 35% of teams making it. (realistically, I assume if 53 is the max capacity it would be bumped up to 54 teams to limit the usage of surrogate matches)This blog says their goal was 60 teams(I believe this was the initial number MAR was going for), so that would be about 40% of all teams. Overall, this provides a fair/similar percentage of teams in comparison to FiM and MAR.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Yea, the Boston pits were a little crowded with 50 teams last year, but I can definitely see "our new overlords" finding the space for 10 more teams. Even if they have to downsize the pits a little from the usual 10x10, I think I would be OK with that. And I think that having the champs in a big city will do good for publicity. But mostly I am just biased towards Boston because my team is in Boston (I did a little dance when I found out the champs would be here :D).

Also, am I the only one surprised that the number of events south of MA went from 1 to 4, but there was only 1 event added for the rest of New England. I'm not an expert on NE FRC geography, but I just find it very strange.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

The first year for FiM, there were about 120 teams and 60-64 at MSC. in other words about 50% of teams were invited to teh state championship. Somewhere between 33%&50% feels about right. much lower than 33%, and it starts making it so that one bad event requires a spectacular event to qualify...

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Depending on how you define "bad event," even at around 40% it's already that way. If you miss the eliminations at your first event, it often requires a trip all the way to the finals at your second district to qualify for the region championship event.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Considering there are <5 teams in Vermont, I'm not surprised at a lack of an event there. Maine and Rhode Island were both close to 3-6 teams not too long ago, but are growing fast and do need one event per state. New Hampshire is at around 30 teams currently, so two does seem reasonable. MA and CT are the major sites for FRC teams in New England (I believe it's about 50 each) so 3-4 makes sense, especially considering everyone needs two events. I can't wait to see the venues for district events close to home, that'll be a major factor in our choice of events (most of our team seems to be willing to sacrifice distance for a great venue). Great job with the quick updates NE FIRST!

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Example this year: 2495. Finished second to last at TCNJ then went on to win Lenape, and even with that, they barely made it in.


Also, it should be taken into account that at 9 Districts, that means 9 Chairmans winners possibly "taking away"(not saying that to be demeaning/condescending) point-slots. IMO with that many Chairmans there should be more spots at the Region Championship(of course, that is, if the NE FIRST points system autoqualifies Chairmans winners, which per Jim Zondag's FiM FAQ is probably the case)

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

That must be a summary of excitement. But all that music makes me think of is you overthrowing FIRST V for Vendetta style. :p

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Another calculation I thought of: The number of teams a region sends to championship from the region championship is: the number of teams in that region as compared to the number of overall teams; this percentage is the percentage of teams at championship that are representative of that region(the calculations I ended up with when comparing MAR and FIM were both off by about 4 teams less, so I'm guessing the number of overall teams is incorrect).


Based off last year(team numbers all taken from this map):

There were 2341 teams registered. 400 at championships. With 151 teams in NEFIRST, that's about 6.45% which is about 25 teams(realistically with the data probably a lower number). NEFIRST is replacing 5 district events, so that means 5 Chairman's, also adding on 1 RAS, 1 EI(this could change as MAR did 2 EI's this year), and 3 winning alliance teams means there should be about 10-15 "ranking qualifiers"*


*of course, this is all just me being bored and in a number-crunching mood, and could all change dependent on how the NEFIRST board decided to do their points/ranking/qualifying system

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

If you use the number of regionals converted metric, NE would get 30 spots. The district model is hard to sell if a region suddenly loses ~18% of their CMP spots.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Except that I remember hearing something about MI (and MAR?) going to a percentage of total teams model for slots at Champs. IIRC, the reason was something like the massive growth in MI. (Source: Jim Zondag's whitepaper, Q24)

That being the case, I would suspect that if an area starts with "# of regionals", and then gets some growth to the point where "% of total" gives more teams, then that would be the way to go; however, if you want all district areas roughly equal, then they all gotta be the same way.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Since it seems that Florida's events aren't lining up my school's break, it's nice to see that the Championship will be in Boston :). Can't wait to volunteer!

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

This depends on the model that is used. As it is possible/likely that FIRST will be standardizing the system across the districts, and its hard to tell what the final result will be. Using several points model simulators (ie the ones in this thread), of the 5 NE winners, only one was even close to the cutoff of the 53/60 line in one model I've seen (and easily made it in several others). Yes if you add 4 more, there is a slight possibility that the robots will not be as high in points, but in general, I think the District points wont produce as wide a variation as the CA performance at Worlds correlation.

Take a read through the old NE Proposal. Because of the 5 events, the district was told they were given 30 qualifying slots. (I think I heard that MI is getting more because of their growth, but FIRST's original stance was you get a # of slots based on the number of regionals you had when you went to districts).

NE also has a large number of pre-qualified teams (CCA, Sustaining) including teams 23, 151, 175, 190 & 236. If these teams opt out of the DCMP like 341 did last year at the MAR DCMP (or FIRST omits them from the # of qualifying teams), then NE could potentially send 35 teams.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Your numbers are just a little off. That map hasn't been kept up-to-date.

2524 Teams total for the 3013 season
154 New England teams competed.

see http://www.usfirst.org/whats-going-on

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

To date (2012 and 2013), this has never happened in MAR - all 11 winners (5 in 2012 and 6 in 2013) would have qualified for the Region Championship without the auto-bid.

2012 DCA Ranks: 2, 9, 22, 53, 55 (cutoff dropped to the 64th ranked team)
2013 DCA Ranks: 2, 6, 10, 23, 31, 38 (cutoff dropped to 65th ranked team)

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

You mean 20 could go to the NE DCMP! WHOOOOOOA! :rolleyes:
Living in New York stinks... ;)

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

This season, the Michigan and MAR numbers for Championship Qualification changed, Michigan from 18 to 27 and MAR from 12 to 14. These numbers are roughly based on the percentage of total teams in each of those region, as Steven mentioned in this thread. That is the reason we are assuming that the same thing will be done for New England.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Lol, I just saw 20 and thought NE(I fixed my typo)... but if New York hurries up and goes to districts, and this whole standardizing districts works out, 20 could come play in a NE event again :) (maybe not DCMP, but at an NE event!)

If this were the case, there would be no incentive for NE to go to districts. Why do more work just to lose WCMP slots for your teams?? Like I said, read the NE blog. I'm fairly certain there would be a riot if we got fewer than 30 slots :)

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

I have been keeping up with all thing NEFIRST, the FRC blog, and anything else vaguely district related, and I have formed an opinion based on what I know. If you know additional information that is not available to me, then of course you would have a different opinion. The blog post you are referring to is from January, and it is my understanding that the situation isn't exactly the same now as it was then. From the FRC blog post announcing the NE and Northwest districts, it seems like FIRST is trying to standardize all districts, and I think it should extend to Championship slots as well.

Furthermore, I think that the number of slots for each district system should be calculated in the same way, so if you are correct about NE getting 30, which you very well may be, I would disagree with that decision.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

I firmly disagree. I see a lot of incentive for New England to go to districts (i.e. lower cost per event, more events, a DCMP at which the best of NE compete, and more regional pride/camaraderie) that outweigh the cost of a few teams qualifying for CMP. Personally, I'd rather go to World Championships
~18% less often if it meant having the District system.

Regardless, I'd prefer to see the "slots for CMP assigned by region's percentage of total teams" applied in New England. That's the fairer way to represent who goes to CMP... that way you don't have Michigan sending a tiny percentage (like they did last year) because of misrepresentation, nor can someone else complain "Hey, that region gets to send 20% of their teams, while we only get to send 15%!"

As a sidenote, only 28 teams (3 ME, 5 NH, 2 RI, 8 MA, 10 CT) qualified in 2013 from New England, despite having 30 regional slots and those extra HoF and founding slots...

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

This. I feel like people are forgetting that just because we carry 30 tickets to championships doesn't mean that we send 30 teams. Between double-qualifying teams (at Boston 126 both won the competition and got chairmans, plus they are an original and sustaining team) and our friends from NY, its not very likely that we would consistently send 30 teams (not including prequalifiers, because they don't take up any of our slots).

Anyways, even if this wasn't the case and we really were sending less teams every year, I would still rather send 25 of very best teams than 15 of what are mostly the best teams and 15 teams that just lucked out.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Here is the link to join MAR if you are in our district reading this:
http://www.midatlanticrobotics.com/contact-form/

We hold board meetings every month or two except during build season. We hold committee meetings ALL THE TIME. Get on one of them and give your opinion.

I am sure that NE feels the same way. Don't complain, join, and do something about any problems you might see. Don't just give us the problems, propose a solution. MAR runs MAR...and we try to get better each year.

Also, I must agree with the posters on the previous page...build a ROBUST robot. In MAR we play tons of matches and have lots of off season events as well as joint community outreach events. Our robots get beat up. Our robots play DEFENSE. You have time between matches, but it is limited; you must build spare parts to just switch out. I know many budgets don't allow it, but if you have to hunt for a 1/4-20 of a certain size it takes too much time. Your teams really need to take a different mentality when going to district. You may go two or three matches without a huge break. Be prepared to fix during lunch and really plan out your day. It is a big help to look at the entire day. My drive team is not my pit team. They used to be, but now it is better that we have a dedicated pit team like in NASCAR. It is overwhelming for your drive team to be on the go non-stop for 10 hours. They need down time or they get burned out.

And...you are competing more. You need to adjust your homework, project, schedule as well. Discuss it upfront with your teachers. Tell them you are gone the entire weekend. Use the time during the week before your competition wisely. Have your mentors schedule days where you are just doing homework and projects, not robots. I get frustrated when my team tells me they can't come to robots because they didn't do their homework and I find out they were playing videogames for four hours. I don't watch TV from Jan to May. There just isn't time and honestly...you just wasted an hour you can never get back. And really, does Game of Thrones truly affect your life?

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

I think there is something important to consider in the above, but I'm having trouble understanding what you mean by sending "15 of what are mostly the best teams and 15 teams that just lucked out." Can you please explain this a little further? Thanks!

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

I think he was referring to teams such as 2nd picks by 1 seed alliances when he said "teams that just lucked out". Although I will agree that a winning allliance is almost never the 3 best teams at an event, I wouldn't go so far as to say they just got lucky.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Yea, I was partly referring to the 2nd pick, which I kind of agree doesn't simply luck out, they have to play well once they get onto that winning alliance in order to make it win. But in 9/10 cases, they are just an average robot at a competition who found themselves in a good place and did what they needed to do.

The other part is rookie allstar. Sometimes, they are really a great team that deserved the award and to go to champs. But other times, they just happened to go to a competition with few/no other rookies, and didn't necessarily do anything special to win the award.

Also, when I said 15 of mostly the best teams, I was implying that sometimes the regional model leaves out some really good teams (every year we see the "best teams who didn't make champs" thread). But from what I understand from the district model, this happens far less often.

So I might of exaggerated a little bit when I said that. It's probably more along the lines of 22 teams who are mostly the best and 8 who are either average or lucky. Still worse in my opinion than 25 of the best teams. But I know other people have other opinions on it, and with good reasons to back their opinions, so I respect whatever disagreement people may have with this.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

I for one welcome our new robot overlords...:p

Ah, sorry folks. No excuse.
In a sense, FRC is our overlord (and we its serfs) for 1/3 of our lives, and so now I 'get it'. Thanks for your kind grace.