Re: Backup Coupon Warning
 

Well, one of these days I am going to learn how to read.

Re: Backup Coupon Warning
 

So the real question is what is the definition of available in the manual?

Are all teams that are eligible also available, or only teams with working robots?
Defining eligible as any teams that are not ineligible from:

and
I can't find anything in the manual about a team being allowed to decline an invitation to be brought in as a backup.

Re: Backup Coupon Warning
 

I think the choice of the word "invite" implies that there is an option not to accept. Otherwise, I would have expected the word used to be "draft".

Re: Backup Coupon Warning
 

I can give my experience from Arizona North this weekend since I was the person that checked what teams were available.

After an alliance choose to use their back-up coupon they got the highest ranked team not in the playoffs. We heard that the next team had already packed up so I took down the 2nd-6th remaining team numbers, of these five, only number 4 was able to be found. This was in the semifinals.

This is what everyone should take away from this thread. Make sure a volunteer can find your team.

Re: Backup Coupon Warning
 

This may have already been mentioned but FMS only has one slot for backups on Elims, so once that backup has been saved that's it. No other robots can be called cause you literally don't have a place to type them in.

Re: Backup Coupon Warning
 

There's a similar discussion, including a GDC member's account¹ of the old inoperability criterion here. (It's not specifically referring to the backup robot, but rather the robot being replaced.)

¹ The opinions of GDC members are not official rulings, and thus only serve as background information for the officials ultimately responsible for making calls.

Re: Backup Coupon Warning
 

This was one thing mentioned to us by the head referee. The system should change and allow you to swap another team number in, just in case an unfortunate event like this does happen.

Say a team leaves, but a mistake is made, and the team who had left is put into the system as the backup bot? What would happen?

Re: Backup Coupon Warning
 

I think the field would see if headquarters could take control and override it but without going into the background runnings of FMS that team is technically your back up team.

The moral of the story here is that you need the field to confirm that the backup robot you wanna call in is working before they input it into FMS.

Re: Backup Coupon Warning
 

You have a lot of smart, creative people there; they would find some hack to make it work. If the field management system can't be fixed, perhaps they could reprogram the robot to use the other team's number, and then worry about fixing up the records later?