Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

The comments on this year's game makes me wonder if FRC should take a different approach to releasing the game design so as to promote greater cooperation within the FRC community.

Other than the disproportionate foul points, I think this game gets an important aspect that can enhance the FIRST experience across all teams. It requires cooperation across the entire alliance to succeed. Unfortunately this year's competition has been dominated by power teams, even to the extent that there's a thread about the "ethics of saying 'no'". This game gets all of the teams back into the action. I think that the game could be better designed, and even Ultimate Ascent could have given even more incentives to alliance play (e.g., more points for FCS and rebound collected shots, and more allowance for blocking FCS to require counterdefense.) But that shouldn't take away from the aim of the GDC.

That said, the lack of design and build experience by the newer teams is highlighted in this game. A disabled or unavailable robot creates a 20 point per cycle penalty. That's unfair to the other two alliance members who have absolutely NO control over that aspect--it's even worse than a 50 point technical. FIRST accentuated this problem this year by pursuing a strong team recruitment effort, particularly in California and Michigan (which I applaud hugely!) The result is even MORE inexperienced teams. From my analysis of the OPRs, it appears that the spread between teams has increased this year compared to 2013 and 2013 (which had very similar year to year spreads).

The answer is requires a three-fold strategy (which we plan to implement the our part locally here in the Sacramento Valley).

1) FIRST needs to announce in September, long before Kickoff, that it is planning a game that requires robot interaction with bonus points. This gives all teams a signal that they must rely on their alliance members much more than in the past. The GDC need not reveal anything more so teams are not going to get a jump on design.

2) FIRST needs to provide a list of newest teams (including prospects) to other teams in the region so that the older teams know who they need to contact for step 3). FIRST should try to finalize this list by the end of November.

3) The more experienced teams should start in September to visit the newest teams, both this year's and last year's rookies to start, to explain how they design for different game strategies, including focusing on specific, manageable tasks at the outset, and to train these teams in building robust, reliable robots. And guess what? This program both enhances the FIRST experience AND achieves some of the most important educational objectives of FIRST. It also builds community by bringing together the best teams (which aren't always viewed in the best light) with the newest teams.

FIRST could take this a step further by assigning the top teams a number of new teams to mentor, e.g., 3-5, and start the assignments based on world ranked order. Participating could become a requirement for FIRST membership. Many top teams do this, but it would formalize the process and ease finding the newest teams. FIRST could even create the ability to have "superalliances" that some how play into regional rankings and world championships qualifications.

Or... You can visit those teams and mentor them regardless of whether the game will require it or not.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Yes, we're planning on that anyway. But we can't change the entire FRC culture acting as a single team, and it's evident that many other teams are not acting in this way.

As an economist I'll tell you that people act much more strongly out of incentives than just through voluntary acts, and also through self-interest. This has been shown empirically over and over. (For a good article on this, Hal Varian, now Chief Information Officer at Google, wrote about this in a 1986.) FRC, and the GDC in particular, should be thinking deeply about the incentives it creates and how it wants to direct the whole organization. Just sitting back and wishing for things to happen won't make them happen. My suggestion is intended to make many more teams to act in this manner, not just us.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

But what incentives would this actually give teams? It is J̶u̶s̶t̶ a̶s̶ more likely that the team you are helping is going to be against you as it is that they are going to be on your alliance. If I magically made everybody in New England 10x better except for my own team, we would have a much harder time, regardless of the game.

I am personally of the opinion that FIRST should stop trying to force coopertition on us with the games. All I see it doing is getting teams mad at other teams who can't do what they say they can do/refuse to play defense for a match because they want to show off their skills and screwing up the rankings. The teamwork and good sportsmanship can happen off the field, where it really matters.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Personally, I think the approach is fine and there are more resources than ever to being a competitive robot on the field.
As a participating mentor since August 1999, I can tell you that there are WAY more resources out there for teams to be successful.

Teams that are unsuccessful in producing a robot that is relatively effective on the field is not something that FIRST can help with, other than cost.

Previous inspiring team designs, and vendors like AndyMark and VEXPro are the ones that truly created an improved overall approach to helping teams with more turn-key parts, 3 day robots (among others), and design ideas.
Today, there are way more teams already assisting and collaborating with each other compared to before where each team saw themselves as an individual against others.
I cant see doing anything more other than just building it for them.

Time management, getting the right mentor support, school support, funding support, commitment to success, etc. is something a team needs to figure out.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Richard- Good comments and suggestions all.

Number three of your post is something we're promoting as well, though the new teams in our area struggle with skills, having no experience with them during the regular school day. In our area (Los Angeles) public education is mostly a wasteland when it comes to technically-based hands-on learning, and our biggest effort is to teach students during what educators call "flipped" time these kinds of real-world skills.

Mentors too sometimes have little conversance with "make it" skills, though expert with design, systems, and the conceptual underpinnings of making a machine play the game well.

I'd like to know how many teams have late spring/summer build seminars to keep the skill-building conversations and motions in play, previous to January.

One added recommendation: more off-season FRC events, locally based and sponsored, that support 30 to 40 teams across maybe two days, that will promote the skill and knowledge base, and transfer the team institutional memory. A focus for the off-season gig would be on inviting newer teams to play the game one more time, helping them along, with expert teams sending their expert people, but not necessarily their machine, to help out.

One more thing-- make the off-season game cheap and local, with minimal awards and junk.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Point #2 - list of new teams in the area can easily be asked for from the local Regional Director or Senior Mentor in the area

List of Senior Mentors: http://www.usfirst.org/community/vol...mentor-program
Regional directors list here: http://www.usfirst.org/regional-contacts

If nothing else, the RD/FSM can send your contact info to the new teams.

Teams should be helping other lower resource teams in their area regardless of whether FIRST provides an incentive. If they aren't, they are missing one I consider a fundamental feature of FIRST that differentiates it from other robotic programs.

I don't know of any special push for teams in CA this year (MI is a different case this last year). We had about the same amount of growth we normally do, I think our attrition was lower than usual this year. So there must be a different explanation for the lower OPR in CA.

I think the Ri3D stuff that came out in the last couple years has done more to help the level of competition than any other efforts in the recent past. Promoting these effort will go along way to helping the quality of play

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

I believe most mentors want to see a higher level of play across the board. Not supporting the younger teams leads to a lower level of play, and for the more proficient teams, a smaller pool of available competent alliance partners during eliminations. The drag from a non-functioning alliance partner is much worse than the potential loss from facing a more competent opponent in this game. The best teams have taken that lesson from this year's competition, not the lesson you propose here.

And if the more experienced teams are given an incentive to engage those teams in the pre-season, then you are less likely to see the resistance to suggested strategies that you note (and others have noted as well--see the thread "the ethics of saying no".)

Engaging other teams to increase teamwork across the organization is an important goal. Remember that FIRST is not the NFL--the objective is not about winning a championship trophy; it's about increasing education and engagement in STEM. Competition is only a means to an end, not the other way around.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

My point is not to leave it to individual teams to act--that will NOT lead to widespread change. FIRST must initiate this from the center to cause fundamental and widespread change. We can't rely on what teams "should" do--we have to act on what they "actually" do.

As for the push in CA, Jim Beck told us several times about the efforts he made (plus the announcements he made that off season events.)

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Fortunately, Northern California had 3 such events last fall (we went to all 3), and they each cost about $200-400 to enter. Great team motivators.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

I'm sure that the Hawaiian Kids have had a huge positive impact on the teams around them. However, as I mentioned I have seen a wider dispersion of teams' competencies this year than in the past as borne out in the data.

What I see is not so much a failure among those teams in building and execution, but rather in understanding the game and choosing a strategy to address the problem. Too often these teams chew off too much, and then are overwhelmed in their attempt to execute. So of course their robot doesn't run well. This year's game compounded this problem because many teams didn't understand the complexity of interrobot exchanges. Providing that guidance, including lowering expectations, can have a better overall experience for these teams.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

This is worth a whole other thread! Robotics competition has the potential to be the new career tech track. We have so overemphasized college education that we are leaving behind the students for whom traditional formal education is not appropriate. Many recent articles talk about how we have many technical jobs available but not enough trained graduates.

In California, we need to campaign on Superintendent Tom Torlakson to start incorporating robotics more directly in the school curriculum and requiring districts to offer these types of courses. This is too important to leave to self-funded afterschool programs.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

But I still don't see how coopertition among an alliance makes a team more likely to help other teams. The good teams out there always have helped teams, and always will, not at all because they are afraid of getting bad alliance partners but because it is making progress towards the ultimate goal of FIRST. I can't imagine a team saying "I don't want to be with bad alliance partners, so I am going to help all the teams around me to be better alliance partners... Even though it is more likely that they will be competing against me." I imagine them saying "I am going to help the teams around me because it will help to inspire them and their community to take up STEM carreers, as well as increase the competitiveness of FIRST in order to better bring about the culture change which we all desire."

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

The stronger the teams, the more meaningful the competition.

If all you're after is a trophy, you can get a very fancy one at any engraving shop for way less money and effort than it takes to compete in FRC. It's having as many excellent teams as possible - and the pursuit of excellence - that makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Your taking my quote out of context. I absolutely agree that helping other teams is a huge part of FIRST. I just don't agree that including coopertition as part of the game incentives teams to do so.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

How does it not? If you think having to rely on your alliance partners in order to win a match isn't a good incentive to help them do well, I don't know what you'd suggest as a better one.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

As an economist, I'll say that there is a very big difference between what people SHOULD do, and what they ACTUALLY do. (I think I said this earlier as well.) Right now teams are not ACTUALLY reaching out as well as they could. (And our team was one of them until recently because we were spending out efforts building up internal resources.) I think the GDC came up with this game because they made the same observation and wanted to increase interteam cooperation. I agree with the GDC if that's there objective. I'm making suggestions to further the GDC's objectives.

The status quo isn't working--come up with a new suggestion.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

The status quo has only been one competition season. Give the current system time to sink in. If there is 2 or 3 years in a row that we see strong intra-alliance cooperation required, we will see exactly what you are describing.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Why not give a signal this coming season? Why wait until next January? Why wait 2 or 3 years for something that can happen in 6 months?

The status quo I was referencing was the history of FRC in which more experienced teams generally have not shared with and supported newer teams.
(Yes, there are exceptions, but that's not the general case.) The GDC went part way to fix the status quo. I'm suggesting going further.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

I just don't think it is necessary to send out game information before kick-off. The assumption should be every year that robot interaction will be required. Sending out a 'Robot interaction required' signal on certain years will only really help on those years. What happens with rookie team who starts on an 'interaction' year vs one that doesn't?

Your goal is one that I think FIRST shares, but giving game information before kickoff is something that to my knowledge has never been done and is likely not the best way to change how teams work together outside of competition on a sustained time scale.

Maybe the focus should be on encouraging the less able teams to ask for help when they need it. My team has never been refused a reasonable request for assistance. Nor have we ever refused to help anyone who has asked us for help we were capable of providing.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

1. Simply put, I don't see this happening. The best we can hope for is a couple of years in a row of this style game, such that coopertition becomes expected by teams, and not something they complain about.

2. You can already do this. As soon as a team registers for a regional, they're listed on the regional webpage. You can also search for teams in your area, and list them by team number to find both the oldest and the youngest.

3. Many teams already do this. My team has mentored several FRC teams through their first season, we regularly have teams over to our build space or go to theirs to help them improve their programs, and we present every year at a local rookie-centric 1-day conference (I believe we had 6 presentations this year, on a wide variety of topics).

You won't see FIRST assigning specific teams other teams to mentor. That sort of mentorship is part of what Chairman's is all about, and it's expected that the best teams out there will be actively going out and doing it. Further, FIRST has no way of ranking teams in order to determine which ones would provide good mentorship for a rookie team and which ones wouldn't.

FIRST has a steep learning curve. A very steep one. Until we start getting rookies signed up in September so they have 3+ months to train and learn, they'll always struggle a bit. You simply can't get all that knowledge into a rookie team that doesn't sign up until December.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

It decreases your variance. Let's say that you have a very good robot, better than all of the other teams at your regional. If all of the other teams were at a roughly similar level, you would expect to win every match. However, if some of the other teams were OK and some were very bad, you could lose some matches due to the randomness of the alliance selection algorithm. Of course, this affects everyone equally, but if you have a good robot you want to remove this randomness.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

You're making the same mistake that many people make--assume that individuals will somehow decide to do the right thing voluntarily including taking the effort to gather information and to then process it. As a professional economist, I see many studies that show that this is a false assumption. To make a policy work effectively, you need to provide people with information and give them default choices that drive them toward the preferred choice. In fact, taking an opposite tack can drive them toward the opposite decision (and is just as much external decision making as the first case.)

So this includes actively sending a list of new teams, not waiting on existing teams to take the added effort of looking up what new teams are registered. In addition, there's a lag between when a team is actually formed and going and when it shows up on registration--a lag that can be critical. Also, the regional director can inform existing teams about informal new teams to help accelerate the process.

While some teams do reach out and they are rewarded through Chairman's, relying on volunteer charity is not a good policy. As I mentioned earlier, Hal Varian, Chief CIO at Google, wrote a paper in 1986 showing this is not a socially optimal or preferred policy and such support is underprovided by relying solely on voluntary action. The point is that "many" teams is still not "enough" teams. We know that many more teams could be helping, and giving them stronger incentives to do so can boost this. Relying solely on Chairman's isn't enough due to the low probability of winning for most teams and great effort for submission.

BTW, a ranking system isn't too difficult to create. Use regional winners and finalist plus award winners.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

I agree. Having a poor robot on your alliance hurts more than having a poor one on the opposing alliance helps. In addition at a regional you can have a robot on your alliance several times, depending on regional size.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Again, you're relying on individual teams to take actions, and particularly inexperienced teams that probably have no idea which teams are good to ask for help.

And yes, I'm saying the FIRST should make a simple change in its game announcement. To be honest, I don't think that it will affect the surprise element of the new challenge. FIRST has released game hints before (although not always accurate). This would be more explicit.

You don't specify why this isn't the best way to accomplish this goal, so I'm assuming you don't really have a better suggestion beyond relying on what is already occurring and in my opinion is not working as well as it could. I think the complaints about this year's game back up my position.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

You can't legislate culture. FIRST is all about changing the culture, inspiring Gracious Professionalism, and provides incentive for teams to do the right thing through awards. There's nothing wrong with providing incentive, but assigning teams to be mentors is not the right way for FIRST to go about it. FIRST provides all the information it can in a way that is easily searchable, and I know a lot of local area teams that help rookies.

As for your ranking system... I know regional winners I would not recommend mentor other teams. They may end up with a robot good enough to be on the winning alliance, but that doesn't mean they have a program that can adequately support and train a rookie team. I also know many teams that win awards but have robot issues every single year - they would not be a good match for helping a rookie team get something built. I also know teams that fall into both these categories, yet would not be willing to do more than a token e-mail to a rookie team if FIRST required it.

Just this past year MN set up a system of "hubs", designed to help rookies, organize team assistance, and otherwise increase the level of competition across the state. The system was set up via an opt-in approach, where a number of teams were invited to an initial meeting and signed up to be "hub leaders". Those teams contacted other teams in their area to start setting up hub activities and get the ball rolling, and it's worked out great - I know I've attended mentor gatherings for two different hubs and been able to give advise on specific issues teams were facing all season. The hub my team is in had several events, including group strategy sessions, group build sessions, and group Chairman's preparation. All on a volunteer basis with no incentive for the teams involves beyond what FIRST already provides with awards at the regionals.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Not true--you can legislate cultural changes. That's what the Civil Rights Act was about 50 years ago, and it was fairly successful. I can name a number of other Awards are not strong enough incentives alone. They haven't worked well enough, and the GDC appears to agree by changing the game design so much this year. The information provided requires SEARCHING--that's an important transaction cost that impedes this activity. (Working on this type of problem is one of my professional focuses.)

You may know lots of teams that help rookie teams, but that is apparently not enough. You haven't suggested an approach that INCREASES that level of assistance--that's what the GDC is aiming for. Instead you're defending a status quo that is not functioning to its best level. You need to prove your basis premise--that the current system is just fine and leaving less experienced teams to swim or sink is the best policy. Instead right now we have a high attrition rate as those inexperienced teams find it too difficult to manage in the current FRC environment. Why not take important steps to help them further?

Yes, there are teams that don't build great robots that win regionals and awards, but to be honest, its much more probable that they will have good robots and programs than teams that haven't won any of those honors--you have to admit that. In your world, rookies are left with NO information about how to screen which teams are potentially good mentors.

That's great that MN set up hubs. (We locally have started a similar program.) Who initiated that process? Was it the state organization? Why leave this to MN? Why not have all states implement such programs? And what proportion of rookie and 2nd year teams participated? Why wait for this to spread slowly through voluntary actions rather than starting a larger program across the board? I expect that participation would increase even more with a more active recruiting process on both sides. Experienced teams would have an even strong incentive to host such programs.

Why are you so resistant to the idea that FIRST should actively reach out to help new and struggling teams?

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

There's just no way that FIRST can adequately pair up teams for mentorship. There's no way for someone sitting at HQ to understand the behaviors and desires of a team 1000 miles away in order to know if they would be a good team to select to mentor another team. It takes more than winning a regional or a few awards to be a good mentor.

Here in MN, the status quo is just fine. In the past 9 years (since FIRST got started in the state with 1816), we've had less than 10 teams drop out of FRC (most of them this past year) - out of almost 190. One of those I know merged with another team, and most of the rest switched over to FTC - they were victims of being pushed into FRC when the school simply wasn't ready for that level of commitment, and FTC is a much better fit for those teams. That's adding 20 teams per year, on average, and losing maybe 1.

If we can make it work here, why does FIRST have to step in and be heavy-handed about controlling it? Instead of looking for FIRST to step in and solve the problem for you, why not get things set up in your area to solve the issues you see directly? Let other areas come up with solutions that best work for them.

The people at HQ are already stretched with everything they do, and the last thing we need is to increase costs for everyone by hiring more people to organize something that can be done perfectly well by some volunteers and teams themselves.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

It may be working in MN, but it's not working well elsewhere. And this is a national and worldwide program, not just MN. And the GDC appears to agree with that point by so radically changing the game this year to create these incentives. So I suggest being so parochial and looking at the needs of the broader community. (And I'll make the point that MN is much different than the rest of the U.S. in community involvement and support, in a good way. But don't expect the rest of us to be like you.) The problem is bigger than what can be fixed at the grassroots with the hope that it will spread. Instead it requires a top down approach that creates stronger incentives to create the type of program that MN has. I work in public policy, and I know that trying to rely on self started grassroots programs to change broader community issues is very slow going, on the scale of decades.

I'm still curious how you propose that rookie teams identify competent local teams as useful mentors. Running a workshop isn't any better than relying on honors as a criteria. At least here in California teams that are alliance captains or first picks and are Chairman's, EI or other engineering award winners are generally quite good at what they do.

The fact is that what I've proposed will not be a large burden on the FIRST staff. Here's what I proposed: 1) Tell us whether the game will require cooperative robot play (and nothing more) in August. 2) Provide to experience teams (perhaps those that meet the honors won criteria) the names of new interested FRC teams being formed PRIOR to formal registration as those become available. 3) Ask the experienced teams explicitly to approach the new teams to provide guidance and assistance.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

For those of you who don't think that the Aerial Assist format caused even the power teams to step up their support of other teams this year, listen to EJ from 254 discussing their in-pit strategy on GameSense, starting at about 0:30 (and further discussion of 1678's in-pit scouting). This should end the discussion about whether the cooperative play mode changed how teams interacted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQdiGHYcrdQ

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

I don't think that we need to have FIRST announce what the game will be way ahead of time, even if it's a minor detail. As the founder of a rookie team, I really enjoyed the game this year as it put a lot of our minds to work on the team in the design and testing processes.

I do, however, love this game over past years. The game actually feels like a sporting event, and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time at Einstein. I hope next year the game is something similar. I kinda wish it was the same game so we could build an even better robot, but that wouldn't be very fair.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Don't you think that it would be great to have teams like 254 working with rookie and newer teams in the fall? Again, listen to EJ's talk--they stepped up their involvement with other teams (which was already extensive) because of the incentives in the game. Why not extend that incentive to early in the year when those teams have more available time and resources? Please don't say that they already do this--EJ's comments prove that these teams can step up even more with the right changes.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

They're supposed to anyways! We don't need FIRST forcing everyone to work together. I'm not going to sit around and expect 254 to come around and help us. We can ask for help from them, sure, but it's in the spirit of FIRST that they help us. Not because the game requires it.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

I'm trying to understand why you think that FIRST announcing a cooperation aspect of the game in the fall will incentivize teams to help neighboring teams before competition even begins.

I listened to the GameSense show, and 254 was incentivized by this game to help their own alliance partners before their matches. While this is advantageous to do every year, the "multiplier effect" of having 3 good robots on your alliance made this even more crucial this year. Thus, I agree that Aerial Assist probably caused more support of lower-caliber partner teams than was seen in other years (although I would need more than one anecdote to be confident about this).

However, let's think about the opponents of 254. I have in the past heard stories of teams helping out the very team that they will be competing against in the next match. While I am certain that these situations happen, I am also certain that teams help out their partners for upcoming matches far more than they ever help their opponents.

So we come to your "fall announcement" idea. What about this game specifically would have incentivized 254 to go out of their way to help local teams in the fall? There are already some very good reasons to help out other teams, but this game, even had it been fully announced in September would not have been one of them in my mind. The reason why this game causes no additional incentive to help out teams in the fall comes from the way FRC matches are currently structured. Since, in any given qual match, you are partnered with 2 random robots, and against 3 random robots, you are 50% more likely to be helping out an eventual opponent than you are an eventual partner when you help out a random team in the fall. This is the same as any other year, thus, I don't see how FIRST doing anything like what you have suggested in the fall would cause additional incentive to help local teams.

I suppose an argument could be made that 254 could stand to gain a little from reducing the variance induced by the randomly generated schedule, but it doesn't seem that you are making this argument.

Again, I'm just trying to understand why you think announcing a "cooperation aspect" of the game will cause any additional incentive to help teams before the match schedule is even generated, please enlighten me.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

I think the 'even' is misplaced. 254 and other powerhouses this season knew they were in an arms race for assist points. Very, very, very few teams in FRC, very few even among eventual alliance captains, participated in the type work EJ described during quals. And even accepting that, there's a huge jump between a concentrated effort in the pit for your own match schedule and a substantive helpful presence pre-season. I don't see any harm in such a pre-season announcement, but predicting a broad pre-season response based on 254/etc response this year is substantively a major stretch. It's certainly possible, but if HQ has compelling points against the release, history isn't strongly counter-weighted.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Let's back to the original premise of this thread: that the GDC wants to dramatically change the relationship among teams by creating an incentive to cooperate. I presume that the GDC is a bunch of pretty smart people and they understand that for such cooperation to be effective that it requires preparation before the competitions, and even before the build season. Team resources get stretched in the build season, but are generally more flexible in the fall. Based on the GDC's action I think I'm suggesting a relatively minor tweak that is consistent with their overall intent.

I also don't think that it is a major effort for most experienced teams to provide additional support in the pre season, especially if the rookie teams are proactively identified along with key contact information (rather than passively posting the list on a website and expecting teams to go there.)

I'm not predicting that teams will respond broadly, but I do predict that teams will NOT change their behavior unless FIRST gives the teams a stronger incentive to cooperate. The GDC appears to believe that the teams are NOT cooperating enough--why else to have such a radical change?

I understand that 254's effort was almost unique (we did the same thing in the Newton field), but that doesn't mean that other teams won't pick up on that in future years. 1114's claw was unique in 2008, but many teams copied it this year. Teams innovate and other follow.

I don't see the downside for the GDC to say simply in September "this season's game will require interaction among robots to score bonus points." How does that undermine the principle of having 6 weeks to come up with a design and build? (We already know that 2015 won't be a water game! Is that too much of a hint? ;) ) More seriously, teams already know what type of drive base they are most likely using next year--that's a HUGE leg up on designing a robot in comparison. The increased incentive for cooperation will outweigh any extremely minor premature revelation that might be possible. I'm not hearing what teams can learn for design from such a statement.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Let's make that two teams: We did exactly the same thing as 254, independently. Our team also went to help teams that we were going to play with on the Newton field. We went to their pits on Wed and worked with them so that they could play at a higher level for the ENTIRE competition. (We helped 1114 who also was teamed with them in a match.) We continued to help them after they played with us. (And it was a ton of fun! :) ) Notably, both 254 and us were the alliance captains in the Einstein final.

The issue you're discussing about whether robots are opponents or alliance mates was discussed extensively earlier in the thread, so I'll refer you there in part. However, I'll tell you as the lead scouting mentor that having poor performing alliance mates was a bigger penalty than the gain of competing against poor performing robots. The fact is that you can have more control over how your alliance mates perform than over your opponents. Our drive coach was most frustrated by poor performing robots and felt is job was easier with those that were up to snuff. So you can't look at this as simple probability problem--it's actually a weighted expected outcome gain. The value of added performance by your allies is greater than the risk of loss from your opponents. I think most of the stronger teams recognize this situation.

One additional factor you haven't mentioned--it provides a deeper pool of prospects for the elimination rounds. The top teams are more likely to be choosing among the lower quality robots given the snake draft. Having a larger pool of better robots, especially at districts and smaller regionals, makes that job much easier (speaking for experience). We took a rookie team to Einstein, so we have a pretty broad scope of who we are looking at. So you need to look at more than just the quals rounds.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

As I posted earlier in this thread, what people SHOULD do, and what they ACTUALLY do are two different things. I'm a professional economist who works on policies to close the gap between SHOULD and ACTUALLY. Incentives matter, and I can show you the research that proves this incontrovertibly. Rather than just sit back and passively extol teams to act, the teams need more of a push to act. (And note that I am not saying FIRST is "forcing" them together--the teams still have a choice, but now they get a more explicit reward.) The GDC apparently decided this was the case when they designed this year's game. I am suggesting a couple steps further to accomplish the GDC's goal.

You're rookie team made it to the World Champs because it is unusual. Most teams do not have that wherewithal. Look back at how other teams performed at the South Florida Regional. There were almost certainly robots that could not effectively interact with other robots on the field. They had problems in conceptual design or in quality of manufacture. In past games, these problems were of little consequence. This year, it could cost an alliance up to a 100 points. These teams, especially rookies, may not have thought to ask, or may not have known who to ask. They don't have enough experience to know which other teams have the resources and knowledge to help them. So why not have FIRST proactively solve this problem?

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Can't it be argued that the same thing would happen even if there was some form of presesason announcement?

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

There are no guarantees about human behavior. And "making the perfect the enemy of the better" is not a productive argument. But from economics we know that providing incentives is likely to change behavior. And the substantial research and analysis from that discipline is the basis for making this proposal. I will tell you that the same thing is HIGHLY likely to occur WITHOUT the pre season announcement. If you want to change behavior (which the GDC apparently wants to do) then you need to change the incentives and structure. It's unlikely to change on a wide scale without these types of changes.

Plus 254 (and 1678) stepped up their assistance in the pits responding to the incentives provided in January. I can tell you that our team would have reached out much earlier if we had known about the game structure in the fall. January was too late to reach out effectively.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

I know I am jumping late into this conversation and I haven't had time to read all the posts, but I wanted to express my opinion nevertheless.
I like the idea of having veteran FRC team assigned as a mentor to a rooky FRC team.
Having 2014 our rooky year, I can tell first hand that even with all resources available "out there" it is extremely difficult to know everything that is necessary for FRC Season.
We were very small team (9 kids, 5 mentors) one of first 4 FRC teams registered in our city. Only 2 teams made it to compete.
It's a miracle we made it, considering number of setbacks we had (missing parts in KOP; other ordered parts took 3 weeks to arrive; fried sidecar etc).
Our first practice run with the robot was our first game at the regionals.

Why am I telling this? Not just for the sake of venting, but to say that it would be awesome to have a Mentor for our mentors and kids, even if it is a "remote" one.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Just so it's clear, I'm not saying there is a downside to doing this if the game is going to fit the bill. I don't see a downside, but I'm not the GDC. As I said, if there is, the probability on the upside isn't very strong in terms of counteracting.

Now, getting the game to fit the bill is a different issue. Simply making/executing highly cooperative games has its own set of challenges, and I wouldn't blame the GDC if they're not ready to tackle it twice. For instance, if they can't come up with a way to do so that meets all their other specs while not overburdening their refs and technology while forcing down game/officiation quality, I could see this type of cooperation taking a back seat.

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

I think we differ on the probability of success may be higher than you think. The alliance captains of the two Einstein finalists have publicly announced that assertively stepping up their efforts at support in the pits was an important component of their success in this year's Championship. (Your team was a highly valued member of our alliance and a beneficiary, even if indirectly, of our efforts.) Just as 1114's 2008 "claw" was an influential model for this year's game, I would hope that 254's and 1678's rather public displays in the Curie and Newton Divisions will cause other teams to step forward.

I think the plea by the previous poster illustrates the need for this type of outreach much earlier than January if FIRST is really going to expand its footprint. (I say more in replay to the above.)

As for fixing the officiating issues, I think it's fairly simple. Before this year, a separate group did the actual scoring (of course after the match in those cases), but they simply need to reinstitute a separate scoring table. Our scouts were able to easily keep up on our live webcasts (see Inland Empire and Sacramento Regionals.) Giving the refs a single screen to look at will allow them to follow the relevant action more easily. The other foul issues were independent of the cooperative play aspect (e.g. G40 reaching fouls.)

Re: Suggestion for a new overall approach
 

Thank you for offering your opinion. Your plight describes exactly what I hope we can address. I suspect that if a more experienced team was able to reach out to you in September (your team # is consistent with starting earlier in the fall) that you have had smoother sailing through the build season. I don't think we can rely solely on "should"--we need to create a situation where teams are "rewarded" much more directly than a feather for a possible Chairman's Award if they act.