Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

Glad to see AM coming to Panther Prowl, but what are they doing there? Is there a workshop or something else?

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

We would pick 1-8 then 8-1 until every team was picked. In 2012 that left number 1 and number 2 alliances (In 2013 only number 1) with only 2 bots so they played 2v2 and picked one robot from the alliance they eliminated to be their third bot (In 2013 number 1 was allowed to pick ANY robot eliminated in the quarter finals) this made those alliances stacked and was one of the reasons that they won the whole event both times.

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

So since the website doesn't list backup bots do we have a final tally of total robots, and by extension how many matches each team will get?

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

Congratulations to the winners! The event was quite nice aside from scheduling and scoring conflicts. The event felt much more relaxed than a normal event and it was fun to get to personally talk with teams about their seasons. The event also served as an excellent training ground for our new freshmen. Lunch was excellent BTW!
PS: Does anyone know what happened to 233?
PSS: If anyone from 3502 sees this post PLEASE pm me! I promised to help your team with some code.

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

I am going to use the following response to vent some of my frustrations with the event while also responding I am not attacking you or your statement just using yours to frame mine

Congratulations to 180, 1557, and 1902. 180 has done a great job winning every Florida event since South Florida 2013 (So 6 in a row). 1557 had a very undervalued robot at Orlando and showed what they could do at this event. 1902's season has been one of the most interesting in the teams history, and it is good to see them win one. Anything I say following this is not meant to take anything away from any of these teams (or any others).

The venue was nice, hotels were cheap and plentiful, and the event staff was very pleasant and friendly, once again I am not going to personally attack these people however I will be offering some criticism below.

The event felt extremely understaffed, to the point where I felt very sorry when we started running late and some people had been on their feet since 8am with what seemed like little to no breaks.

The referees seemed untrained for the game, in a game where refereeing was crucial. This could have been solved by implementing the IRI rules (as many offseasons do) making the refs job easier without unique robot-zone requirements, and the penalty forgiveness for several actions. Now I can understand if you want to keep the game the way it was all season but my next point contradicts that.

Why create an endgame? I am sorry but it bugged me that it was sprung on us at the event. Most off seasons tell us when we will not be dealing with standard rules, I feel something like this is one of the things that should not just be told 10 minutes before we go out for a match.

The event seemed to lack inner communication. At the drivers meeting we were told how we would be queued, when I pointed out it would have us running into each other, they switched it, only to switch it back (at least for our goalie bot) midway through the competition, without telling the people dealing with robot traffic on that side that they would be, resulting in awkward conversations with the volunteers.

Finally this is the ONLY event I have attended in nearly 10 seasons where every team was not given a printed out schedule, I see no reason why this was the case but it was. This may seem minor but it is one of those common courtesies that I am used to event staff giving teams.

I will admit that the event did feel more laid back and less high pressure then regionals but that is to be expected at an offseason where not a lot is on the lines. It is always fun to talk to other teams and make friends I just wish that we would have had some more connection to the event in the pits. What I mean is, no screen in the pits for ranking, match played, or anything of the sort (until we only had 5 matches left in the day), it is good to be laid back but like with the schedule issue above it may just be me being spoiled, always having it available to me before.

When I spoke to event staff I was told it was a scheduling conflict with a NASA event that 233 had to attend. I am more interested in what happened to 86, who apparently signed up to attend, was on the match schedule, yet did not appear at the event, nor on the event website.

I realize that I may get flack for this post but these are problems that need to be known/discussed/debated and this was off the top of my head

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

I think you just said what everyone was thinking.

I don't know why, but the thing about the schedules bothered me the most. You can have issue gathering resources and such to do specific things or large-scale things, but not handing out match schedules was ridiculous.

I will also add that the AV setup at the event was awful to nonexistent. The two projected screens were washed out by light, there was no timing or scoring overlay at any point, rankings were not available in the pits, etc. I understand technical difficulties were rampant, but it seems like no one even tried to test some of the equipment that went up.

I had as much as fun as one could have an off-season event, but that doesn't excuse the fact that the event was poorly executed. If Panther Prowl is to continue to be the premier off-season event in the state of Florida, some people are going to need to make some serious investments in improving the overall quality for participants and spectators.

- Sunny G.

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

Out of curiosity... what was the endgame?

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

I thought it was very interesting (even though I agree it should have been communicated to teams before the drivers meeting). There was a 1x1 foot square taped to the floor in the middle of the field under the truss. If a robot was possessing a ball and completely covering the square at the end of the match, it was plus 15 points. Created a "king of the hill" sort of thing at the end of some matches. (Yes there are questions about different sized robots getting an advantage, but overall that did not seem to play into this competition).

Disclaimer: I was not at the event. But I did witness some scoring discrepancies from the webcast (some match altering ones, at that), and was told that people were not happy with the lack of rankings and the lack of scores on the projectors. While it is just an off-season, it is still a competition, and some of these issues need to be addressed moving forward.

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

*Disclaimer* These are my observations and concerns as someone who attended IRI and both Florida regionals.

Field related:
Pour refereeing. Numorous uncalled frame protrusion, excessive ramming, field over reach and human player violations caused match outcomes to change.

No field scoreboard also made some coaches unable to tell if a stratigy change was needed.

End game. I felt like no thought whatsoever was put into this. It seemed like a great way to get a high speed ramming penalty, confuse people who missed opening ceremonies and hurt mecanum drive robots all in 1 quick change!

Pit related:
Match schedules, rankings, deviation from schedule, current match, and lunch schedules need to be public. I am especially irritated as some places listed a 24 match qual schedule while 744 and the field where using a 29 match one.

Noise pollution. We all understand the importance of safty glasses. And thanks to the extremely loud speaker system, hearing protection. It was virtually impossible to have a stratigy discussion with alliance partners due to the consistant interruptions. The speaker system could have also been used to periodically update teams in the information missing from the lack of displays.

Pre event:
A lack in information on team lists, what set of rules where to be followed, # of matches a team would play, end game specifications and total number of qual matches was a problum.

To put it in fewer words and bluntly, I felt like it was a pourly run event with numerous tech problems and little thought put into actually making the expierence enjoyable for teams or spectators.

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

That was my first turn off after the drivers meeting, the first of the day was holding the meeting without a microphone, especially when the list at the scoring table was missing the second page of matches.

I can add to this that the audio setup was confusing to me, we can all clearly hear George calling the matches play by play, but come awards time we couldn't hear the winners being announced and we were sitting down in the queuing area 20ft from the field. We could all hear the music as well which could have been turned down in my opinion, but every time I complain about loud music I feel just that much older.

This is hilarious to me because the last two panther prowls were great, I attended in 2012 and everything ran perfectly, video live scoring etc. I watched from home in 2013 and had a perfect webcast (I can't remember if there was live scoring). To me it seemed like all these problems could have been resolved or helped with more volunteers.


Here was my problem with being there, no one checked it. I can not remember a single match where refs went out and made sure it was legit before having us go out and get our robots. And to continue on to our endgame it seemed so last minute and just unnecessary.

Focusing on lunch schedule here, the field announced SOMETHING related to lunch break, now what that something was, I have no idea as I couldn't hear the announcement, standing in the drivers station, over the loud music, this caused for 4 of the 6 robots in the next match to not show up (most veteran teams), when I walked to 2 of their pits (they were close enough they both could hear me) and said they both missed their match both seemed flabbergasted, and angry. Their WHOLE driveteams were in the pits, with the robots, eating lunch, if ANY volunteer would have gone into the pits and asked for them to queue (Like at every event I have ever attended) they would have been out. Which brings me to my next point, I believe that you did not have to attend the match to receive credit in the rankings for that match, which is a big no no

Lets not get into the fact that the response to the match schedules were, "Oh well we emailed them to your lead mentor last night".

I will disagree with your last half of your last sentence, I do think that thought was put into making it enjoyable, little funny moments like rick rolling us by starting with the harlem shake show that, I just think that some of the little things that we all just come to expect (especially in Florida) were overlooked

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

As much as there were problems with the event, can we not turn this into a "bash Panther Prowl" thread? Legitimate concerns and possible solutions to them should be brought to the attention of Panther Prowl leadership. Problems and possible solutions can and should be discussed on CD as well, but try not to just air your frustrations on here. Remember that this event is largely run by the students at FIT, and I'm sure they would appreciate constructive feedback to improve for next year.

Here's a link to the contact us page from Panther Prowl's website: floridatech.orgsync.com/org/firstatfit/contactus

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

I don't know if this happened during quals, but during elims, they were definitely checking it.


So, apparently the main lunchroom where the "official" lunch was held was not large enough to accommodate all teams at once. As such, teams were being sent to the lunch room in waves. However, just because your team's wave was up to go to lunch, that didn't mean that matches were stopping or that they would wait for you to return. It just meant that the lunchroom would now be able to accommodate your team.

- Sunny G.

Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

So, I dont believe we know all the details of panther prowl's planning, conflicts, and execution of the event. I have heard of some but I dont think its my place to discuss them on here publicly. I can understand how it can be frustrating to teams who were there to compete. In Florida, we are cultured to help each other and understand if something goes wrong we all jump in together to make it right.

Unless you have ever organized an offseason event, you have no idea what it takes to pull one off and you only view an event from an outside perspective. Things may not have gone very smoothly yesterday however one should contact the planning committee directly for clarification.

As far as the schedule goes, it was sent to all team contacts the night before. I printed couple of them out for our team.

With that being said, Team 108 had a great time playing with our friends in Florida.

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

Was not attempting to "bash Panther Prowl" as I said in my first post and even brought up in my second, I really think they tried their hardest to make the event as great as it could be but certain decisions were made that were poor. I can definitely say that most of our team had a great time, our rookies who were put out to perform relished the opportunity, our drivers green fat suit during eliminations brought a normally shy kid out of his shell. I feel that we as teams enjoyed ourselves for the most part. My whole idea was constructive criticism, though I may have strayed from that. I understand that it is hard to put on an event and had this been the first panther prowl, or even what was the norm for the event I would not have made my statements but that is not the case most of the problems I have said did not exist at the previous events.

Re: Panther Prowl 2014 Florida Off-Season
 

At least it was an off season event in Florida. I thought it went pretty well.Thank you to all the volunteers and to FIT.