Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I don't think anyone is trying to bring the bottom 10% up to the level of the top 10%. The goal is to increase the level of play and capacities of all teams, so matches are more exciting and more inspiring. Robots sitting dead or unable to accomplish game objectives isn't an inspiring experience for most people, not if they continue to do that year in and year out. Teams that have to put completely untested mechanisms on the field and have them fail with little hope of improvement isn't inspiring. The best teams are the best because they have worked hard, and have passionate people that have gained great skill at this sport. That won't change but for the majority of teams that are just trying to play the game, I believe they will be helped by this change. I know for sure that the teams we mentor each year would be helped by this change. They could get more days at our machine shop. They could come with us when we go scrimmage with our friends in the area. There is so much more they can do. Right now we sometimes have to help them attempt to build upgrades for their WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE with no knowledge if it will work on their robot because it's in the bag and they don't have a duplicate or an exact CAD model.

One of the strangest things we have to do most years is to explain to the teams we help why we are building two robots or explain why we get to keep working on our robot (they may not see the bagged one) but they have to have theirs in the bag. It takes a while for most people to fully grasp that concept.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Like I said a couple of sentences later, I currently want to start building two robots / continue working after stop build day to be more successful. If you want to get specific, I don't think it is the norm here in NC to build two robots so, on that scale, we may currently be keeping up. But it's our goal to do more than just keep up, and working longer and smarter is one of our first steps.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Heading into year four of coaching VRC/VEX IQ with a tentative 16 teams this season. The elementary aged kids and their parents unanimously agreed that we should schedule their events earlier in the season this year (December or earlier) with an option to continue after the new year only if they REALLY want to. Our 3rd/4th graders especially were a bit burnt by the end of the season last year, after starting between July (in summer day camp) and September and meeting all the way through March. The middle school kids were overwhelmingly opposed to a short season option (their parents were mostly opposed as well, less vehemently than the kids however, and some said it would be convenient for family scheduling reasons). It wasn't a point of discussion for the high school age group. Overall they all seem aware enough of their own limits and able to balance appropriately.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

This is really great feedback!

We started 25 Vex IQ teams this year, formed in July, and competing this Oct-Nov. It sounds like 4-5 months is reasonable, but it is harder to ask the joe-shmoe team to commit to a 8-9 month season?

Just trying to get the general feel for best fit for teams.

Thanks!

-Mike

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I think you are coming at this like I am arguing heavily to keep SBD. I'm not, I'm just trying to get to the root of that argument.
The answer to your question is that there is a huge difference between unfettered access to the robot and a withholding / unbag time. The former is much more daunting. (And for those like us who want to keep working longer than 6 weeks, it is also more exciting)

Did I say I am in favor of keeping SBD? Also though, I think you are really skewing what I said. I didn't touch at all on "the rest" being "content with their current performance" or how they feel about how much they work.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

We get a new manual every year. We can pilot baglessness for a year and if the results are worse then we bring the bag back.

I believe that life without a bag would be better, but I'm prepared to accept a bag again in 2018.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

2019, that is. 2017 will definetly have a bag day, as stated by Frank.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

1678 is not an amazing and successfully competitive team because we are talented. We got to where we are today with long hours of mostly well planned out hard work.

We could not have reached as far as we have without the practice robots we build that enable us to keep iterating our designs. In 2013 we were a unknown player to the greater FRC community, nobody knew who we were outside of California. Then we won our division after being turned down by our first 3 picks. We made it that far not because of talent, but because of working our butts off to make our robot ready to compete on the world stage every moment we were able. 2014 was much the same story for us. 2015 we had a good robot, not overly amazing, but our success was because of the time and work we put into developing our can grabbers. We finished the design of our final can grabbers the day before we left for Champs, not one team ever beat those can grabbers.

Our robots would still be good if we didn't build a practice bot, but they wouldn't be Einstein good. And a good robot is useless to a driver that can't drive it to it's potential.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I do think that the "middle of the road" option is actually going to be the best one here.

And that's the one Jim has proposed: Weekly unbag time.

Anybody else remember the FIX-IT Windows, back about 10 years? Same concept, only with robot access.

For anybody who wasn't around at the time... There were three classes of material that could be brought in. Spare, Upgrade, Raw Material. Spare was identical replacements. Raw Material, well, you can figure that one out (included COTS). Upgrade was either improved functionality in a Spare or a whole new system, or both. Long and the short of it was that Upgrades had to be built during your FIW time--the first year of that, it was one 6-hour window, IIRC, but after that it was up to two with neither shorter than 2 hours. Something along those lines. Spare... Not sure if that was buildable outside the window. Oh, and the other annoying item was that you pretty much got one per event, if memory serves.


Now, let's see what happens if you stick the robot in the bag at the 45-day mark, and then once per competition week* you get to pull it out for up to X hours.

--Access for measuring
--Access for driver practice
--Access for programming
--Access to install that one item that just didn't quite make it into the bag...

And whaddayaknow, the district areas already do this (instead of a full practice day). So you can't say that that's a total unknown. Matter of fact, it's a known.

The real catch is that teams that don't want to open the bag can simply tell their members that "we're not going to use this time this week, go get some more sleep and catch up on homework".


*I'm not going to go into whether that's "week before your competition", AKA 1/event, or "week before any competition", AKA 1/week. Doesn't really matter for pure speculation.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I think uniform unbag time would be good like Jim proposed. My only question would be does this come with a scale back on regionals to move to the district model of practice day starting at 5pm or would district teams get an extra 6 hours on top of the uniform 8? The unbag time exists so districts can operate on a shorter time frame of two full days plus one night for robot work/inspection that is scheduled from 5-10. It usually is more like 3-4 hours with teams setting up their pits, lines to unload, and other small issues.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Regionals can partially save their poor value proposition by starting qual matches Thursday after lunch. A majority of the personnel required to run those matches are already there, you will just be really hurting on spares at key positions like refereeing.

Whether or not SBD ever goes away, a move to give RPCs an option to "hybrid" their regional into a regional on a DCMP schedule with 6 hours of bag time should be allowed by FIRST.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

That would be one to discuss. I could see a compromise where districts keep 8 hour unbag, while regionals get 4-6 hours (or something like that), with suitable adjustments to the practice-day schedule (say, opening the doors a couple hours later). But that would be a matter of detail that would probably best be worked out by HQ with appropriate input. (Hate to remind all ya district folks, but you do tend to do a lot better overall than the regional folks. So giving us a little bit of a "head start" with extra time might actually be better than evening it out.... :p:D)

Back during the FIX-IT era, that wasn't an issue--something about everybody being at a regional.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I heard California events are making moves to high school venues like you'd see for districts. Seems like a wise choice for them to take it a step further and make them hybrid events.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Haha those were the days. Back when Thursday morning involved a small early crew to uncrate the robots!

You are correct and it can be said 6 hours in the shop is more valuable than 6 hours at an event for most teams. I wouldn't say all because in my experience when the bag opens at a shop the productivity takes a slower, more relaxed pace than a group of 5-8 people in a pit with an immediate goal in sight.

However adding up the hours its still more time with your robot/setting up your pit than a district team so we can't tip the scales too much! :p

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I'd say that's very fair. Time in the shop, after all, is usually more valuable than in the pits (what with the access to all your machinery, parts, etc.). In fact, you could even keep regional's practice day and equalize the unbag time between regionals and districts (considering most teams do 1 regional/2 districts) that would even out the difference some more.

BTW, it's 6 hours/event currently in districts.