Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Can we NOT NOT NOT have a tiebreaker be something that is so subjective and prone to error as penalty points? Obviously a penalty created the tie in the first place, so why in the world would it be what breaks the tie?

I know, the assumption is that one team played a "cleaner match" than the other. However, given the increased number of ways to earn a foul this year, the large percentage that even one foul counts for and the huge number of frustrated teams who were affected by inconsistent calls (I'm not dissing the refs, there's only so many things they can see and do at once, and if they are half as prone to making mistakes as I am...) it seems like it would make more sense to have assist points be the tiebreaker. That is the mission of this game, after all.

Otherwise they would have named it Penal Desist

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Honestly, I would rather we just get rid of tiebreakers. They were added in reaction to 2010, a low scoring game that caused a lot of ties, but we have never had a game nearly as conducive to tying as that game. Tie breakers just put arbitrary emphasis on certain parts of the game. For example, this year's was assist points, which effectively meant whichever team scored less in auto won the match? Weird. I'd rather we just replay the 1-2 elims matches per competition that come down to a tie than use tiebreakers to declare a winner.

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

While I agree that there definitely needs to be more practice time at regionals (especially since pits close so late), I think they should still start early since it incentivizes teams to actually finish their robot during build season.

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This is true for most of the match, but when the coach needs to shout an order to their driveteam during those last five seconds it's not realistic. My team had a quarterfinal match in which I was counting down from ten for our drivers, but we had to change our strategy from shooting to trussing with five seconds left, and they shot early without lining because I wasn't able to count from five and also tell them to truss instead of shoot. We lost that match by six points.

It's not an excuse, we lost that match fair and square, I'm just saying that it really would be nice to have the last 5-10 seconds counted down by LEDs.

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I personally loathe practice day (I have PTSD from the word "Filler") but I do think Practice Day would be more effective if the field was open for teams to practice til the pits close. Every team should get a chance to practice and shutting the field down at 4 makes no sense.

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I like this shift, but it made me think of something else.

At the two MAR districts my team went to, we didn't have a 'practice day', but rather a load-in/unbag/inspect/maybe-practice night. We're allowed to get to the venue ~3, and can unbag and inspect, then could practice from 5-10pm. (Or maybe it was 9 and pits closed at 10.)

At that point, why not just go back to having a traditional practice day like we used to at regionals? We're already there for 7+ hours. It was shifted WAY too late, and my students were exhausted by the end of the night. Falling asleep in the pit exhausted. At another district event where I was volunteer coordinator, the volunteers weren't able to leave until almost 11, and then they were expected to be back at 7. It was great to have practice time, but at the cost of sleep for volunteers and teams? Maybe time to seek alternative solutions.

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

We should be getting rid of Practice Day Match schedules.
Just make it a filler. Once you get inspected, you get in line and practice all you want.
It was crazy at our first event that they wouldnt let us go back on the field during practice day in consecutive matches.
The very next match NO ONE was on the field.:mad:

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'll probably post more later, but one thing thats been bugging me since champs is the shortened team intros we saw on einstien. I know they are trying to keep things moving but I think if you get there your team deserves to be recognized in each match. Also the fourth bots teams should have been brought out for the handshake.

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

That's extreme.
My policy is to try to get full matches.
I too think the schedules need to go. They cause more trouble than it's worth.

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

In 2009, the long and detailed intros were incredible and inspiring. I LOVED in particular the way the relationships between the teams were discussed and when they had played with and against each other. Ever since, intros have been kept fairly short and only trivial information gets discussed (awards won that year, if that). I know there is a time crunch but those combined 5 total minutes aren't where we should be cutting time down.

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

To add on to this, I think if FIRST is going through the trouble of adding in more opportunities for judging of awards, we need to be getting better feedback everywhere. I was very disappointed and had a confused look on my face when I took the awards lead down to pit admin to collect the nonexistent feedback, but going back over the feedback sheets we did get at Alamo and Virginia, I wish we got better feedback.

FIRST has my email and contact info for myself and the other contacts in TIMS. 422 went to championships to see how we stack up against other teams and learn from them. While we had the opportunity to do that with the robot, it was very disappointing to not get that same experience from judges of the highest honor in FIRST. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that we are miles behind 33, 340, 503, 604, 1108, 2486, or the Hall of Fame teams when it comes to program quality, but I want to know exaclty where we need to be improving and to see if we are missing anything.

I know under the new structure judges are overworked, but I would like the detailed, digital feedback offered at one of Spectrum's events (Dallas or Lone Star?) to be available at every event including Championship.

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Each district (at least in MAR) was a bit different with this, some would run full 'practice matches' while others would just allow teams to connect to the field (which normally involved the robot sitting on a cart next to the field).

Personally, I think that practice matches load-in night are a good idea, but only if they're being done as an 'open' sort of thing, with additional (regularly scheduled) practice matches in the morning for those who were unable to practice on load in night, for a plethora of reasons. To lessen the load on volunteers, each team involved in the open practice could/should help reset the field, especially in games like Aerial Assist (and to a lesser extent rebound rumble) where two or three drive teams can handle the field reset in a minute or two...

Free fire zones
 

Following up on the practice field comments - I wish there were more "free fire zones" in the pits. We tried to recalibrate our shooter at the beginning of every day (our shot was dialled in pretty carefully: From against the low goal to "one robot distance" back from the low goal). Unfortunately the only place you could launch a ball and then adjust the robot was on the one practice half-field shared between two divisions (200 teams). There was a constant 1 hour wait for 10 minutes of access to this field. Many of our matches didn't have 1 hour between them, and it took us more like 15 minutes for a proper calibration. Moreover the field closed 1-2 hours before the pits at night, which made very little sense to me. In short, we never did get the shot perfectly calibrated (although it was close enough for all but one of our matches).

I loved what they did in NYC: They roped off a ~ 30 x 30 ft wide "unsupervised operating area" next to the practice field. Teams formed four parallel lines and operated their bots as needed (running auto, practicing shots against the wall). Everyone was gracious enough not to hog a lane, and I never saw a line up longer than 10 minutes, despite there being 100 bots in the regional. Even if FIRST was uncomfortable about a free-fire zone, it would be nice to have practice half-fields with more than two lanes when you're serving hundreds of teams.

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I think you're missing the 6 hour unbag time in the week leading up to the event which is supposed to replaces the practice day. The first day is supposed to just be a load-ing/unbag/inspect and at some events practice is thrown in. I've been to events where we were allowed to practice Day 1 (Bridgewater) and events where we weren't, and practice was a couple hours at the beginning of day 2 (Chestnut Hill, Lenape 2013).

Of course, the 6 hour unbag time can't really replace true on-field with other team practice time. The issue with having a full practice day, at least in MAR, is probably the fact that the MAR events run Friday-Sunday in a highschool gym which would involve invading a high school during school hours.

Re: 2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Also at all NE Events (at least the ones I went too), we held a firm no teams in until 5 pm on Day 0. Out of the 4 district level events I went too, only one had the field ready for practice matches on Day 0, and that was because we started set-up on Thursday (what we called Day -1). So for us, we've kept the time teams spent on Day 0 significantly less to the old Thursdays at regionals up here.