Re: Eliminations replay card
 

Of course they don't deserve a replay for that. Such a scenario seems to be against the spirit of F.I.R.S.T. I'm pretty sure the FMS can detect which stations are plugged in and which aren't.

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

In any normal year where it is 2 out of 3 this is never gonna happen. If you have any issues and completely fail one match you have two more to make up for it. Either way, error or not, the best alliance is still going to win.

Specifically for this year, I still believe it's not reasonable. One of the goals of FIRST is to give a head start to the real world and the jobs you'll have. How many times in your career will you get the chance to redo a major project because of a simple error? In the build season or production phase it might be acceptable. However, during competitions or once a product is on the market, you have to roll with what you got. If something fails, the best you can do is roll with the punches and be better prepared for the future.

Speaking from experience I know just how frustrating this can be. It cost me what could've been the biggest win of my FRC career. It also taught me an important lesson. Murphy's Law will always apply. Our team should've just designed a better robot. Then again, hindsight is 20/20...

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

I suppose saying days was an exaggeration of the situation but the point still stands that 8 replayed matches is still a fairly large chunk of time for everyone involved.
Also shout out to staff and volunteers for being able to keep pace at these events for such extended periods of time.

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

Part of FRC is to introduce you to how engineering is in real life: you can't use a redo card if you're landing something on the moon.

this is also unfair to the other teams, who successfully beat you, in part because they remembered to tighten every screw, plug in all the batteries, make sure their pneumatics were well built (cough cough my team in 2012 cough cough).

FRC, especially recycle rush, is about having the robot best made for the challenge win, and that includes durability (in my opinion anyways)

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

Our team doesn't build the best robot each year, but we are known for being a reliable team - robot works, and drivers can drive.

Mulligans are good for teams with a high variance, and penalizes teams with low variance.

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

It can detect if the DS is unplugged, but it cannot detect why it was unplugged.

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

For this year's game, you could implement a similar "best 2 out of 3" in semi's by only taking the average of the alliances two highest scores (drop the lowest). This would allow for a single bad match without replays. It really comes down to what the GDC was trying to do with this scoring format. If reliability and consistency was important, then the current method works fine.

Mike

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

I agree with this. When the Mars Climate Orbiter failed do to a simple mistake, NASA didn't get a "redo". In real life, once a mistake is made, it is usually final. Learn from failures made in FRC and apply the knowledge learned in real world applications.

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

Good point. I think is why the best two out of three system is better in my opinion because it gives each matchup a "get out of jail free card" so to speak in that if you lose one match because something went wrong you didn't seal your fate. On the flip side two out of three doesn't fit well with this game at all because there is almost nothing a majority of alliances can do to influence their opponents.

It happened to us twice this year with two big messups on our part leading to an early out in the quarterfinals at both of our events. In our second match at Reading we messed up placing the RC on top of our 6 stack which kept our average 10 points lower than what we needed to move on. At UNH our driver station malfunctioned for the first 30 seconds of our second quarter final and we sat out of semis by an average that was 1.5 points lower than what we needed. Our apologies to 1768, 1289. 138, & 1307. :o

Its a brutal game but a match replay coupon is not the answer. As if there weren't enough field time outs already this year.

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

This isn't a bad idea at all.
It would prevent the stupid failures, like 303 losing communication during their last semifinal at Tech Valley, and not making it to finals by one average point.
It would also allow alliances to show their best stuff and have it count. Never before has an alliance put up the regional high score in their last semifinal match, then not moved on to finals, like the 1126 Alliance at the Finger Lakes Regional.

That being said, a change like this would change the strategy of how the game is played. Right now depending on where your average score lies, you might choose to play a high risk or a low risk game. That would dissappear and make the preferred strategy in semis a high risk game.

Other thoughts?

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

To be blunt: ugh, no, this [redo card] is a bad idea.

Detractors:

-You're going to make another alliance subject their robots to another match because you screwed up, or you'll play a match with no opposition. Neither of these situations is equitable.
-It reduces the reliability required to excel in eliminations, which is one of the main points of eliminations.
-It could/will be used as a poor excuse for a failed strategy.
-It will add a considerable amount of time to each event.
-This will cause a great amount of pressure and responsibility to be put on the field staff to determine if the redo card should be allowed and/or the mechanism will be abused.
-Cheapens the whole experience. To me the whole idea feels like a little kid screaming at their friends for a redo because they weren't ready. I feel that FRC teams should be held to a higher standard than that.

I do like the idea of only counting 2/3 SF matches, although the push for reliability and consistency is clearly the dominant factor in this years game and is reflected in the eliminations setup as well as the QA-type ranking.

Related - these micro fuses have given my team no issues this year. This type of fuse gives me zero issues in my daily-driven cars and the cars that I've raced, including custom hand-made PDBs. The same can be said for millions of other cars over their life-cycles of decades. They stay in place during collision events, heavy vibrations, and a variety of accelerations. If a team is having issues with these fuses I would bet large sums of money that the fuses aren't properly seated or that the fuse socket is damaged.

I know this sounds a bit harsh, but if a team can't be bothered to check that their critical hardware is in good working order do they really deserve to be playing in eliminations? See page 13 on the user guide for the PDB: http://content.vexrobotics.com/vexpr...e-20150305.pdf where it says: "Warning: Also take care to ensure fuses are fully seated into the fuse holders. The fuses should descend at least as far as the figure below (different brand fuses have different lead lengths). It should be nearly impossible to remove the fuse with bare hands (without the use of pliers). If this is not properly done, the robot/radio may exhibit intermittent connectivity issues."

I know these last two paragraphs probably sound a bit harsh, and I am sorry if anyone is offended by them. However, I feel very strongly that individuals and teams should be proactive in avoiding mistakes and be responsible enough to do their homework to ensure that they are 'doing things right' instead of trying to find ways for FRC/FIRST to accommodate mistakes that might be made. Ask "what could I have done to avoid this mistake?" instead of "what could someone else do to mitigate this mistake?"

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

My only thought:

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

If 148, 987, and 1114 aren't asking for it after they had victory ripped away for stupid reasons, I don't think I will support it for kids forgetting to plug something in. No thanks.

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

One more thing I'd like to add...

[CROTCHETY OLD MAN]
Back when I was a student we didn't have field coms checks, ever. It just wasn't part of the field control. Didn't plug in your battery? Didn't turn your robot on? Forget to plug your radio in after tethering? Forget to hook your control board to the field? Your fault, you got to sit for a match.
[/CROTCHETY OLD MAN]

I lol'd. Thank you for that.

Re: Eliminations replay card
 

I completely agree. At the end of the day we should have double checked everything was ready to go. I just wanted to see what the thoughts in the community were. I also am beginning to like the idea of counting 2 of 3 semifinal matches.