Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

It was a tough loss. I would like to thank our alliance members 2481 and 4213 for not giving up and forcing a great 3rd match. Props to 2081, 2022, and 292 for the hard fought win. Congrats also to teams 525, 1986, and 4296 on the win and surviving the finals carnage.

I do want to thank everyone involved for putting on a great regional despite all the challenges and thank all the teams that participated. I was expecting some great competition coming into the regional, and wasn't disappointed. I hope to see CIR continue to grow in Central IL and look forward to competing against many of the same teams again the future. I hope all the teams that traveled enjoyed the regional as well and make it safely home.

Get ready Wisconsin!

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I am excited to compete with you guys at Wisconsin!

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I look forward to playing with you guys as well. I was really hoping you guys would go all the way, see you in Wisconsin.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

2022 drive team here. I just showed this to my fellow drive team members, and we're sincerely sorry about what we did to your robot. We had no idea that we had damaged it like that until now. Our pickup mechanism had broke mid-match and was stuck in an awkward position that caused it to hit your pistons like that while attempting to play defense on you. We really hope this doesn't impact our relationship between our two teams, because before this match I felt we had a really good relationship. 1736 and 2481 were two of our favorite teams to work with during qualification rounds and we hope we get to work with you again in the future. Also thank you to 2081 and 292 for giving me what was probably my best competition experience to date.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Dont worry, easily fixed. We should have foresaw it and protected them better. I hope we didnt cause too much damage to other robots ourselves. We never really intended to play that much defense going into the regional, but after seeing how effective we were at it, we decided to keep doing it. Im sure others could post damage we caused too. It was cool seeing your team cheering for us, we'd definitely not hold a grudge. I thought they were some great matches, hope to see you back at CIR in the future, good luck at midwest!

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Apparently the refs discussed this after the match and decided not to call it because they didn't call it when 4296 was flipped twice and 1986 was flipped once. Definitely a very rough elimination round.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Thanks to all the teams who participated in the inaugural Central Illinois Regional. We trust everyone made it home safely, are glad you came, and hope that you left with fond memories of the "coolest" regional and the snow globe.

To the students of 4143, i am very proud of what you have all accomplished already this year. Each of you has made a great contribution to the overall picture of what it means to be on a FIRST team. Well done, now let's take what we've learned even farther.

Thanks to all of our alliance partners, in particular our finals partners 2039/Rockford Robotics and 171/Cheese Curd Herd, we look forward to seeing you both in Wisconsin.

Congratulations to 525, 1986, and 4296 on your win and for a hard fought three matches in the finals.

Huge thanks to the Tim, Vera, and the organizing committee, all of the sponsors, and all the volunteers. I also want to give Big Al a shout for all the help to me as a rookie Robot Inspector.

It is on to Wisconsin for 4143. Although we do have a few minor (sarcasm) rebuilds to work out after the finals matches. And some design, scouting, and training improvements to incorporate lessons learned.

On the game itself:

• Matches will be hard fought. Build a tough robot. Everything from common sense to the reveal animation made that point, and the game play has borne that out.
  
• The refs have a huge workload and there is no reasonable expectation they could see everything in a game this hectic. Sometimes those breaks are going to hurt, sometimes they'll help. It won't seem fair. In plenty of cases it will not actually be fair. That's life, and not an unimportant lesson in and of itself.
  
• If you barely clear a high goal then there's a good chance the ball is coming back out. Use game strategy or plan for this in your shooting design to minimize the risk.
  
• It is very hard for the HPs to avoid reaching into the field and taking the big penalty. Train. Practice. Have discipline. Be alert if you are a HP and know how much you can help or hurt your alliance by how quickly and precisely you react.

I'll be spending more time using these observations to help the students learn how to respond than on lobbying FIRST for any particular change. No disparagement of anyone pursuing that course, I like sincere efforts to improve the game for everyone. Some of the changes being debated on line (and i'm sure in week 1 bus rides home) would improve the competition. I'm just not going to focus there myself and instead try to use the time to work on the things that are within our team's control. Whatever FIRST does we will deal with when (if) it happens.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I very much disagree - how can the referees know if the damage existed before the match, or if it was accidentally caused by a robot on the same alliance? Both may be unlikely, but to overturn the results of any match, let alone a regional-deciding match, should require an extremely high standard of evidence.

While I sympathize with teams that have competed, I understand how some fouls can be missed when it seems to be a common situation that 5-6 robots are all piled in the same quadrant of the field, and the one referee there has to watch not only for any fouls, but to keep track of possessions and potential pins...

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I couldn't see the screen from where I was watching.
The twitter feed does show 50 blue foul points, so I believe this is true.

We did tip over pretty much right after autonomous ended, so while the scoring outcome was not affected, the gameplay certainly was.

For anyone interested, we went dead in F-2 due to our driver's gamepad going bad halfway through the match. The operator's gamepad was fine, which was why our pickups were functioning. That was a failure I never expected to see.

We switched driver's gamepads during the timeout and everything was fine for F-3. We just couldn't drive very well on our side.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

That may have been a G26-1. It occurs at about 1:58 into the match. 2039 reached into the red low goal while trying to get a blue ball from the corner. I am surprised they ruled it a technical, rather than just a foul.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for this amazing "rookie" CIR.

As the driver for 4296, I would really like to thank our team for construction of such a robust robot, able to handle the beatings of the field(If your robot cannot handle defense, believe me when I say, MAKE IT SO IT CAN) I feel a lot of the defense in this game is due to the 1 game piece, when a robot does not have a ball all it really can do is defend/set picks for team mates and as a result there are often 4 robots playing defense at a time.

This was our first time ever getting out of qualifications and moving onto eliminations and I have to say, it was a lot of fun. Interacting and working alongside 525 and 1986 was extremely enlightening, as a newer team still, we still have a massive amount to learn.

Thank you to the drivers for both 525 and 1986 for keeping everyone calmed through our first loss of eliminations and for all of us working together and adapting extremely quickly after the loss of one of our two able to shoot robots(525) resulting in the last two matches being conducted with one robot able to shoot.

I would also like to thank 4143, 2039, and 171 for the absolutely amazing (and brutal) finals matches, which resulted in an extremely close final deciding match that no one really had any clue of the outcome until it was displayed. These final matches were extremely well played by both alliances and it was a lot of fun to participate in them.

I look forward to seeing anyone who will also be at the Milwaukee regional.

In addition, I would like to apologize about any damage that we caused during the entire regional from defense, I know our robot took a lot of damage through out the weekend and has caused us to prepare to make a lot of fixes at our next regional, thankfully these robots are able to take a fair amount of a beating.

Overall, Thank you for the great regional. Thank you for the alliance selection to 525 and 1986, thank you for the amazing final match to 4143, 2039, and 171. And most of all, prepare your robots for a lot of defense in this game.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Edit: This comment was incorrect and proven incorrect later on in the forum by information that I had not known of.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Might want to double check who your alliance members were haha

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I am still tired from last night and the drive home, I have fixed that up haha.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

The blue alliance should have been red carded in the final finals match.

Intentionally tipping a robot falls well within the bounds of an automatic red card especially considering it had happened in the previous match with obvious consequences. Behavior like this on the part of a team or alliance is despicable and goes against the entire concept of this program. I've seen rough play before, but intentionally tipping over a robot goes above and beyond. I know, as many have already pointed out, that the outcome would not have been changed. This behavior needs to be publicly discouraged and the shame of losing a finals match in that way would have likely made it clear that it isn't okay.

That said, I'd like to thank our alliance partners 3138 and 3284. They are both excellent teams and we look forward to opportunities to work with them in the future. Our matches in quarters were hard fought and we could have won if we hadn't lost power in the second match. For that I am sorry. Our battery box broke and allowed enough movement for the connection to be broken during a hard hit from the opposing alliance.

The inspectors that we worked with, specifically the gentleman from 1986 who performed the bulk of our inspection was fantastic and exactly the type of inspector that we need more of. It is obvious that Al runs a tight ship and things went smoothly on Thursday

A huge congratulations for the number one seed winning alliance. The level of adversity that this alliance faced was unlike any I've ever seen. No alliance should have to put up with play like that being allowed against them and they still won. An excellent showing.

The problems all of the teams at the event faced were because of a few individuals. The rest of the volunteer staff was amazing. The queueing staff was excellent and friendly. A huge thank you to the volunteer staff in general. Events like this one can't happen without a great deal of support.