Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

There are numerous threads on this topic, so I thought it would be a good idea to take a poll on people's opinions. It would be great if you left a post explaining your vote.

Thank you!

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

Keep it as it is. (6 weeks)

Many of my thoughts and opinions have been voiced by others in this thread http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=116658

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

You forgot unlimited.

Very few people are arguing to make the build season literally longer. They are just proposing that there is no bag and tag day; that you are allowed to work on your robot up until your first competition, then bring it home and keep working on it until your next competition, and never have to stop working on it.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

3 days

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

This poll is misleading. What is your definition of "build season"? There are people who wants 6 weeks of unlimited access to build and then have limited access each week after.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

The poll seems a little lopsided... where's the option for less than 6 weeks? :p

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

6 weeks - Tolerable
7 weeks - Only small chance of becoming ill
8 weeks - Likely sick
9 weeks - Wait, do I still have a job?
10+ weeks - My this straight jacket is comfortable, wouldn't you agree?

Seriously, work expands to fill space allotted. Plus it's way cooler to tell people "students built this in 6 weeks".

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

If less is better, then why not 3 or 4 weeks?

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

If its not 6 then unlimited.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

There's a minimum here too, so, let's take a build season:

1 week of prototyping is good. And it lets teams iterate a few ideas.
1 week design
1 week waiting for parts/fabricating parts
1 week assembling
1 week testing
1 week iterating

Anything less than 6 and you are removing crucial parts of the design process (ok, waiting on parts isn't crucial but it's unavoidable).

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

personally I think it's to long by about a week in a half, this is 100% biased though based on our teams goals.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

6 weeks is about as far as a good student can go before they completely break down and lose the ability to succeed in school. I know, I did it. Over the six week build season I tended to have a manageably small number of big assignments-papers, difficult tests, etc. There were plenty of options for the ACT/SAT that didn't interfere with the build season, and if school work suffered because of robotics, I could catch up. Every student is different, and so is every school, so YMMV, but that's why I like six week build seasons.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

Seconded

I can be fairly confident that anyone voting 7 weeks or more is not a mentor. A mentor with a family, job, life, bills, a house that needs maintenance, a car that also needs maintenance, and the other trappings of life as we know it.

6 weeks is already too long. We all know it can be done in 3 days, so that's my vote.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

I voted for 10+ and am a mentor with everything you mentioned minus a house that need maintenance.

Having a build season that doesn't have a stop build day would just represent what many top level teams area already doing with practice bots, extending the build season way past the 6 weeks. Saying that the current build season is 6 weeks is a lie and its time to update the build season schedule to match what teams are already doing. It will save teams money(not having to build a 2nd robot) and hopefully save teams sanity(take more time off during build to relax as teams are in less of a time crunch. Not all teams and everybody will take time off but there are plenty who will.)

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

Same vote, same reason (well, minus dependents but with the addition of classes as well as a job). I run a 3-hour-one-way commute to my team every weekend in build, plus usually 6-hours-in-one-night at least one night a week. I wouldn't do that in a 10 week build if you paid me, and I'd be ecstatic about it. Perhaps an extreme case, but if you're willing to work to defy Parkinson's Law, 10+ (no stop build) has incredible upsides.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

There is a lot of wisdom to having a hard stop to build season. One is that I (hopefully) get to keep my day job, sanity, etc.

More seriously, it imposes a sense of urgency not shared by other robotics programs. It is part of what makes FRC both as challenging and as rewarding as it is.

Also, in real life real projects have real finish dates. Get used to this!

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

I voted for 6 weeks. There is no good reason to change it. This allows us to "lie" to sponsors, potential mentors, people you want to impress that it was all done in 6 weeks. Technically we are not lying because the robot is there after 6 weeks. For many teams, it just usually doesn't work very well if at all. After the 6 weeks, it is not part of the "build season" any more. We got to spend more money and work on the practice robot for as long as we want, sometimes even spending more hours per week than the build season.

Some people are talking about a hard deadline of 6 weeks, adding rules to disallow practice robots, or anything that is used to get around the rules. That will really let people relax and happy after 6 weeks. (please note sarcasm)

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

Deadlines are a part of life. Challenging ones self to meet the deadline with the best robot one can build. Every team has the option to build a second robot. Can that be stopped? No, people will just call it another project. Right now I believe there should not be a hold back rule and that no additional mechanisms be brought into events. If you want to design, fine but build at event from raw material.

As an aging mentor I find it harder to go 6 + weeks and then volunteer at events. We all get tired and as was said earlier we will fill any time given and will still want more.

Accept the challenge, be proud of your 6 weeks work.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

Any longer than six weeks, and we would get even more burnt out than we already do!

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

I voted 10+, I didn't like shipping the robot when I was a student and I don't like bagging the robot now that I am a mentor.

There will always be a deadline, it will just be the same as off season events, your first match.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

The 6.5-week Build Season does not seem to be a maintainable option in the near future.

Since the 2010 FRC Season, the number of competition weeks and events has increased significantly (see chart below). The FIRST Championship (CMP) seems to have been pushed back as far as it can go. The VEX World Championship (17-20 Apr 2013, 23-26 Apr 2014, and 22-25 Apr 2015) now basically coincides with FIRST's CMP dates.

It is very safe to say that more Regional-Region and District events will be added in the coming years. FiM now has 12 District events scheduled for the 2014 season, while PNW has 10. Once FiM, PNW or another Region reaches the need for 13 or more District events within its Region; I think more competition weeks will be needed, since it will be very hard for a Region to manage 3 District events on a single weekend. If the 6.5-week Build Season is to be maintained, it will mean a December Kick-off and Start Date for future Build Seasons. It also means you are going to have a Build Season that will overlap most High School Winter Breaks (may not be a good idea) or have to enforce an arbitrary Stop-build period over the Holiday Season.

The increase in the number of competition weeks and events also needs to consider the possibility of Super-Regionals or Intermediate Championships being added to the FRC tournament advancement structure, as has been done for FTC this competition season. VEX VRC has changed their tournament advancement structure this season as well; it now includes a State Championship level for advancement to the VEX World Championship. So eventually, we could end up with a November Kick-off and Start Date for future Build Seasons or just might end-up going year-round.


Season / Weeks / Competition Dates / # Regionals / # Region CMPs / Districts / FIRST CMP Dates / Total Events

2010 / 5 / 04 Mar-03 Apr / 43 / 1 / 07 / 15-17 Apr / 52
2011 / 6 / 03 Mar-09 Apr / 48 / 1 / 09 / 27-30 Apr / 59
2012 / 7 / 01 Mar-14 Apr / 52 / 2 / 15 / 25-28 Apr / 70
2013 / 7 / 28 Feb-13 Apr / 58 / 2 / 17 / 24-27 Apr / 78
2014 / 7 / 27 Feb-12 Apr / 54 / 4 / 37 / 23-26 Apr / 96

Regions: FiM, MAR, FINE, & PNW

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

Or... we could just push the championships back into May. Why not?

And eventually we are going to need to have more events per weekend. The only limitation to this that I can think of is lack of volunteers (yes it would cost more money, but that is what districts are solving). However the solution isn't to add more weeks so that volunteers can volunteer at more events, that is just asking far too much of them.

I just don't understand why this is an issue to you. But whatever the issue is, adding more competition weeks is a temporary solution to a permanent problem.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

In states like Michigan where public schools are by law required to start after Labor Day (meaning they finish in mid June), that's reasonable. I think it's somewhat common for seniors to get out early (correct me if I'm wrong), however. For my school (and as a private school, we started in mid to late August) that meant that seniors finals happened in mid May. Say what you will about seniors giving up and not caring about anything at that point, but it would be painfully difficult for any senior to crack a book of any kind at champs from what I've heard. And what if finals fell on the week after worlds? having worlds at the end of April is about as far back as it could be pushed for seniors who get out in May, in my opinion.

I would kill for the chance to work on the challenge over winter break. Again, this is a goofy side effect of the school I went to, but we have always had kickoff, followed by first semester finals starting the monday/tuesday after kickoff. 2013 was a fluke in that we had a whole week between kickoff and finals, but no matter how you look at it, the stress of finals combined with the start of building a robot takes a toll on a team. If we had our Christmas/New Year's break to work on our robot, that would be a massive, fantastic boon. It's always difficult to wrangle students during breaks, but since teams have established patterns of extremely long days on weekends when students have homework and everything else pulling at their time, I don't think it's unreasonable.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

Your right, I forgot about the seniors. My school is the same way. But I still feel like winter break could cause a lot of problems for some teams (especially teams who are actually based off of a class in school).

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

I have always thought about having build season be in November and December including the holidays, but it would be incredibly difficult for teams who are school based; some schools cannot meet if their school is closed.

I would love to see:
Build in Nov/Dec. Districts in January/February. Regionals and Regional Championships in February/March. Worlds in April with more than 2 weeks to get airline tickets. :)

We can't go into May for many reasons, including AP testing.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

6 weeks... a real 6 weeks. Clamp down on all that other stuff teams do between then and the competition. It's already an honor system anyway, so why not?

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

What do you mean by this?

What's your definition of "a real 6 weeks?"

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

AP, IB, and state testing.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

Apologies in advance since I've never done FRC before, this could be an obvious question that everyone but me knows the answer to. I see lots of pictures and threads about people building their new drive base and what not during the off-season but how can they know what to build before the January game release? What if you're a rookie team and don't have a KOP from last season? Are you at a disadvantage before you even start?
Maybe it's better to start an unofficial team in the off-season and just buy the same stuff as the previous season KOP then you'd have some experience pre-kickoff plus you could, well, pre-build your drive base like all the other teams seem to do! Or does the game vary enough to force a chassis design change at kickoff? My observation is the same basic drive base seems to have been in the KOP for a few years.

Probably just proven I have no clue....

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

Don't feel bad, you'd have no way of knowing having not competed before.

Teams make these as prototypes, and don't use those specific drives for the following season.

They remake it during season (often with some changes to match the game).

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

...speaking of Ri3D, anybody know if the minds behind it are planning an encore performance for the 2014 game?

Its kind of interesting though, when you think about the growth in terms of the sheer number of events we hold, and how many fields it means need to be in existence.

2015 is going to be a pretty humongous leap too, what with at least 2 more (and probably 3-4 more) district regions coming online.

All of this feels an awful lot like we're currently riding the corner on an exponential growth pattern.

Its cool stuff to think about.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

In FiM (I can't speak for MAR or any of the other districts) the district system provides its own fields except for the state championship.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

Teams design and prototype systems (usually drivetrain) because it is a pretty sure shot that we will be allowed to have a drivetrain next year (dont even get me started about a water game :mad: ). They make sure their designs will actually work and improve them before kickoff. As per the rules (2013 4.1.4 R16)
So, teams publish their CAD and designs to Chief Delphi for community feedback (Co-opertition) and to legally allow them to build it next season.

Teams have to build another "ROBOT element" after kickoff, but it can be identical to the prior design.
It is (for all intents and purposes) impossible for teams to guess next year's game, and it would be foolish for anyone to build a game specific component before knowing definitively what the game will be. Systems such as drivetrains, however, are in the game every year (don't mention it! :mad: ), so work on improving them is certainly useful.
If you watched the Championships last year, you may notice the number of high seeding teams with only slightly modified KOP drivetrains. That should be a clear indication that even without a fancy, custom made set of wheels, teams are not necessarily at a disadvantage.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

Thanks for providing an insight into how it actually works and I think it would certainly make sense for a rookie team to build something like the usual KOP drive train preseason so they also gain some experience before kickoff.
br

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

You say that kind of as if it were a desirable thing for the majority of teams to do....even though they haven't got to where the top teams are in terms of number and dedication of mentors, finding monetary and build space resources, etc.

The poll results are telling, a 70% majority of responses are 6 weeks, and my wild guess is that the top teams are over represented in the poll response.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

I would think it is safe to say "top teams" spend more time on Chief Delphi in the off season, for one reason or another.

Re: Poll: Views on the 6 Week Build Season
 

"Top teams" and their mentors are vastly overrepresented on CD in general. It's sort of annoying how people often represent the opinion of CD as the opinion of the FIRST community at large...