[FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I received this email today:

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Marshal? Here is your chance.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

If I'm a coach and didn't receive the survey, should we A) fill it out and give them more data or B) not fill it out since we're not a part of the population they want to sample?

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This poll is bad and it should feel bad.

Seriously though, it is very poorly written and the way the choices are laid out does not make a lot of sense. I question whether the data they get back will even mean anything given that.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

:yikes: :yikes: :yikes: :yikes: :yikes:

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Agreed. I had to read through the first questions a couple times just to understand what they meant. The whole advantage and disadvantage answers just don't seem to fit with what they are asking. At least the Remove stop build day and keep it as is answers will be useful.

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Based on this line, I'd say anyone over the age of 13 is invited to fill it out:

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

+1

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Yes.

"Is having 6 weeks a disadvantage to a whole bunch of stuff?" Of course.

"Are those disadvantages outweighed by the life lessons and playing field it enables?" Up to the reader, and the real question they should be seeking to qualify and quantify.

As another poster pointed out, the last couple questions at least hit that key at a high level. Doubt they will get useful data from the rest.

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I thought the questions were laid out almost as a way to inform the general public (i.e. - a larger group of people than the CD echo chamber) about the pros and cons of the bag day rather than really collecting information on it. I found the survey to be a little confusing and that the first page seemed a little biased - but I think it's interesting they sent a survey out at all.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

+2

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The way I read it, low numbers meant you didn't like bag day. It seems a little late to be making this decision for 2017.

I issue I see with eliminating bag day is doing something rational with spares at the competition. Or maybe not. With only allowing 30 lbs of fabricated spares, no one will be bringing in a spare robot.

Keep in mind that First does monitor these threads. At time it seems to influence their thinking.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

If bag day is eliminated, then why would they keep a withholding? I would think that would go away completely and they would come up with some definition of "second robot" to say "don't bring this" instead.

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That would be too broad of a definition IMO. One would keep withholding to prevent massive robot-sized mods to their robots. Withholding could stay, thus forcing a lot of teams to do nothing more than driver practice once they hit that 30lb limit.

EDIT: Wait, how would withholding even work? Ignore me, I'm being weird- they would have to remove witholding allowance. That does create the problem of totally new robots, but I doubt many teams will do anything more significant than they are already doing. After all, if they wanted to copy, say, 254's robot, they would have to do it in just a few weeks and get all their driver practice in too while other teams are just busy practicing the whole time.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

First and foremost, the survey is terrible. The questions are incredibly confusing, and abstracting any data out of it should be done carefully.

Secondly, bag day, though a challenge is part of the larger one. Having only 6 weeks to build a robot is a very looming challenge, the stop build timer counting down like an evil overlord. To me though, it's part of the fun (or lack thereof when I'm asked 3.5ish months from now.)

However, if they were to remove bag day, you get into the whole Ship of Theseus problem of "if they change every part of their robot, is it still the same robot?" Where is the line drawn between "improvements" and "totally different" robot?

I digress, the survey stunk, and should FIRST want better information, the questions should be worded to make more sense. We may be roboticists, but we're not all rocket scientists. :P

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

But if we don't have stop build day, the robot doesn't go into a bag... why would I stop working on it just to practice? And if the robot is not in the bag, how do I, as an inspector, determine what is withholding and what isn't? Say a team brings in a 50 lb manipulator. If it's detached from their robot, do I call it withholding? What if it's held onto the robot by a zip tie, or a single bolt?

Without a bagged robot, "withholding" loses its entire definition. Besides, as the rules are now, I could bag hundreds of lbs of spare parts and it would be just fine.

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Two L's.... people with one are weird.

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Sorry about that. But having 2 L's in your name doesn't stop you from being weird. (I have 2 L's in my last name as a point of reference.)

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

In 2013 we went to 2 regionals and Champs. We built 2 robots(second was mostly just a drive base). At our first event we didn't like how our shooter performed so we made an entirely different shooter and that was our 30 pound withholding. At our second event we didn't like how our intake was working so we made a completely different one and took off our shooter so we could keep working on it. At champs we had a completely different robot than what we originally bagged. The only part of that robot that was not changed was the drivetrain.

Withholding and bagging is only really a hindrance to teams without a second robot and who only go to one event. 1678 stops working on our robot when we leave from Champs. I believe every team should get the same time advantage we have because of how we choose to use our resources.

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Asking if Advantage or Disadvantage. The only one's who see this as an Advantage are those that can finalize a robot in 4 weeks or less and 2 weeks of driving.

So I predict it will lean heavily towards Disadvantage.

Does FRC want this to be more or less of a challenge?

FRC: More

So a 6 weeks build is a disadvantage?

FRC: Then our job is done here.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

>wears zebra pants
>calls people weird

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

In all seriousness, it does seem like it was deliberately written so that they can pull some data that says "Hey! A lot of teams like what the 6 week build season brings!"

At least the most important question is cut and dry. Eliminate Stop Build Day or Keep Stop Build Day. It's hard to spin those numbers in a certain direction.

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Without bag day, there is nothing to stop you from bringing a different robot to every competition. Not really a complaint just an observation. But with the existing rules some even built a new robot at a competition to replace the one they brought.

True under previous years rules you could bring two robots + unlimited parts if they were bagged. Well they had to fit into 2 bags. I expect 2017 rules will have a Zebra clause to address that.

Nixing the bag, I would like something in place to prevent teams from bringing the equivalent of multiple robots to one event.

[edit] Different line of thought. Writing good surveys is difficult. Must I see are mediocre to bad. Not that I would do any better. We should give First the benefit of Occam's Razor[/edit]

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

It's all good.

Ok, in all seriousness, this survey is kind of terrible and reminds me more than a little bit of the two championship survey so I can't wait for them to roll out a graph and blog post in a month or so explaining how everyone voted to keep stop build day...

I'm not going to make another case for getting rid of it but I sure would like to see it relegated to the dust-bin of FRC history along with stupid rules about pneumatics, spinning incandescent bulbs, and D-Link routers. Or hey, we can keep eating our young and ensuring that new teams have a hard of a time as possible.

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I responded to the survey with the most "I hate stop build day so much" perspective as possible.

And it was very hard to do.

EDIT: The grammar in this post is almost as bad as the survey.

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I definitely agree with this... That has to be a very hard rule to write, though! How would you differentiate between a spare robot and a collection of spare parts? Under the definition of ROBOT that's been used in the past, it would be relatively simple to turn something from a ROBOT into a MECHANISM. Remove the radio and it's no longer a ROBOT, as it no longer has communications included.

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Why is this an issue? It's not an issue for FLL or FTC or VEX... I've never seen someone complain about an FTC team switching out robots between events... granted, I don't pay a lot of attention to FTC but I have asked FTC student participants about it and they like being able to modify their robots and see improvements.

Also, I'd like to point out that a team can build two robots now provided they follow the weight and out of bag rules (it's a lot easier for district teams, trust me). They can't compete with both of them at an event and thanks to us they can no longer walk in with both of them but they can leave one bag at home and bring one with them and then switch them out after an event.

Which actually goes back to the original point, there is already a rule (new-ish) that a team cannot bring two things that look like robots to a reasonably astute observer to an event (Thanks 900!).

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

FTC has had equivalent rules for ages now. Don't even need to borrow it from VEX:

Obviously doesn't include all the subsystems stuff, but I'm not entirely sure that's necessary anyways.

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For now, I think removing stop build day will give too much of an advantage to district teams, who will be able to see how they perform before iterating it more and more, as compared to 1-regional teams who only get to play one event and can't really improve more. Because of this, removing stop build day will favor district teams even more when Champs rolls around.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I agree that the questions were confusing and difficult to parse. I hope this is only the first step in their (public) research process on this issue.


As this thread is starting to (d)evolve into a discussion of the actual possibility of eliminating bag day, I have one main thought on that. Nobody knows. Anyone who speaks with certainty on how the elimination of bag day would impact teams' robots, teams' performance, teams' mental health, teams' sustainability, or FRC as a whole is talking out their behind. At this point there's little more on conjecture. There are a multitude of factors in play, and almost certainly the elimination of bag day would impact different teams very differently. The bottom line is that we simply don't know. That doesn't mean we cannot pursue the change or that the change will be bad, but it does mean there's a lot of uncertainty.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

The way the survey is written, I cannot think of a reason except the following

1) Hoping to confuse some people so with a large sample, the data will average out to the middle with both extreme. The conclusion will be inconclusive so we will keep things the same.
2) Questions are biased to educate/convince people to answer a certain way and hope for a certain outcome. The conclusion will be we will keep things the same.

If they really want to consider the possibility of a change, the survey will look very different.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

3) They had someone very inexperienced write the survey

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While I cannot argue that it is not a possibility, do you think something like this will go out to all the teams without management review and approval?

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I probably can. I can easily see someone who is very busy looking it over quickly and going, "looks good to me." It's also very possible that FIRST doesn't take the surveys all that seriously and more so to get the general idea of what teams think of certain ideas.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Fun fact, the FTC rule was written way back in the day when it was still FVC (FIRST VEX Challenge). That same rule was used in the new VRC for a few years, however we adopted the subsystem breakdown in response to teams trying to find ways around the rule and switch between robots during a tournament. As always, a simple rule became more complicated and bulletproof in an effort to stop some edge cases.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I agree on this, for sure. (And the same for implementing districts, but that's another topic altogether.)

Speak for your own team, to the best of your knowledge--but expect to be wrong, and don't be surprised by someone else having a completely different experience. I'd put money on two teams in the same area answering completely differently because they're not the same team.

Just for my team... I really don't know. I think it'd help us on the field, but then I look at the students who got burned out last year and wonder if it wouldn't help us more if you had to "run what you brought".

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Have you used FIRST "updated" websites and on-line tools?
I cannot imagine they've been fully vetted and approved by management, given the difficulties encountered with new versions.

(It took me 3 attempts to get our W-9 form accepted in the new TIMS site this year.)

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Ok, I agree, the survey was a bit one-sided, however, IMHO I would prefer to see bag and tag ended. Now I get that I may not have thought through of all of the repercussions but I really can't think of how I have been helped by this rule. As a rookie coach, in (less than) six weeks I had to not only deal with learning a bunch of technology that was unfamiliar but also how to be a good mentor to the kids. After a couple of years, I figured out that in order to be competitive I had to build two robots so that I could keep working on development after the deadline. Of course that means that we are spending twice as much for spare parts(If I can get them, after all, everyone else has to buy parts for two robots) and building 2 robots means that I am having to use our sponsor's shop to build twice as many parts as I really need.

During the meet season, well equipped teams are able to practice using their practice bot and use the 30 lb allowance to perfect the robot defects while smaller teams have to let their robots wait in the bag until meet day.

Isn't meet day a good enough deadline? What are the downsides to ending bag and tag day?

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I disagree, when we build practice bots, we build two identical robots and then remove mechanisms from the practice robot as spares for the main competition robot. This works fine for us. so there isn't actually a lot more fabrication and manufacturing of parts necessary, obviously there is a necessity for more control system parts etc. but you would normally bring spare control system parts to a competition anyway. If you design the robot to be disassembled easily your practice robots mechanism can easily serve as spare parts( within the 30lb withholding)

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

There needs to be a stop build day at some point or teams would enter the last possible events before states ( if a district model) to get more work time in on the robot. Teams that get a week one home event would be impacted by the lack of time.

In real world there are production deadlines at some point.

Just my fifty cents.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Nobody knows what the long term effects will be of the ending of the single Championship event either but the alleged benefits have been touted by management and its supporters. The fact that accessibility has been increased from 400 FRC teams to 800 FRC teams is a fact that holds as much water as the fact that eliminating bag day can provide up to more than double the hands on time with the machine teams build during the season. Whether or not the sum of unintended consequences in both an already executed decision and the one being surveyed yields a net benefit remains to be seen.

FIRST is an organization made up of many parties of stakeholders that can barely be corralled into certain definitions of "mentors", "teams", "volunteers", "sponsors", "schools", "management", and "STUDENTS". Tickling the sliding scale is an inherently perilous exercise, which is why we rarely see strictly positive responses to any moves made.

When questioning why some people are ready to dive in head first into murky water, remember the organization has already done this many times and will continue to do so.

A good exercise that may be worth pursuing: here is the blog detailing the strategic pillars for FIRST. How does the removal or maintaining of bag day stand on these pillars, and how does it falter on them?

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I agree with everyone else on here that this survey is very poorly written. I honestly hope they do not use any data collected from this. Hopefully they will rethink the survey and do it again.

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Also, everyone should keep in mind that any discussion on CD is likely more biased towards competitively successful teams than is the general FRC population.

Source: https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...d.php?t=143630

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Every team that attends a week one event will have had the some amount of time to work on their robot. The same goes for a week seven event, every team that attends (a week seven event) will have the same amount of time to work on their robot. The event dates are your production deadlines and at the end of the season you would still have a championship(s) event where everyone has the same deadline.

In Minnesota we use a similar registration system for FTC, yes the later events tend to fill up faster because teams want more time to practice but in the end it doesn't really make a difference. Most of the competitive FTC teams compete in 2 events, one early and one late event - the change in competitiveness from the first event to the last event is huge but each team gets an equal amount of time to work on their robot between events. At the state championship all teams are on the same level and no one feels slighted by attending an early event vs a late event (at least no one has shared that issue with me).

I did have one Minnesota FRC student and family come up to me at the MN FRC State Championship last year that felt the level of competition was unfair. They felt this way because the teams that had attended two Regionals, followed by the World Championship had multiple hours of unbag and practice time vs the teams that qualified at their first and only Regional but didn't qualify for the World Championship. Eliminating the 6-week build season would fix this (somewhat unique) problem.

As for the topic at hand, I would set my stance as neutral-leaning towards eliminating stop build day, that being said I do really enjoy having a six-week build season.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

It definitely has a lot of flaws but it should still very much be filled out. IF people don't fill it out because they don't think it has any merit, that will discredit it even more. May as well give it a shot and if they interpret it badly then that's really too bad but hey, we tried.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Yeah! It doesn't get harder to compete as the season goes on!

Ohh wait, we have that data, average match score by week:

http://www.thebluealliance.com/insights/2016

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

If you can afford build a practice robot then there is still an incentive to enroll in the last possible events regardless of a bag and tag rule. Having the extra time to practice and build spare parts is incentive to wait to the end, even with the bag and tag rule.
There is also incentive to enroll in early events in either case because teams are still learning the game and have not had time to fully develop their robots and game play tactics, thus increasing the odds for a more inexperienced team to be successful.

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I'm not 100% sure how it would impact our team however what we have seen (for both my current team and prior teams) is that in order to keep up with the field second bots are a norm and if you don't have one you have to work really, really hard to pull it off. Teams like 359 have made it work with one machine however they are far from your average FRC program, but that's mainly in part due to the huge efforts they have put in to grow their FRC/VEX programs.

This year 1058 built two complete machines but in doing so our strategy/design discussions usually centered around us aiming simpler because we had to do it twice. It was really tight on a budget for two machines and the only way it worked for us was we made design decisions based around what COTS items we could reuse along with making one electronics board we swapped between them as part of our withholding allowance. The process worked well as we saw an increase in on field performance and our level of prepardness going into our events. I saw the same things on 1519 when we moved to a second machine in 2009, capitalized on it in 2010, and they continue to do so today. Same goes for 3467 we built a second chassis in 2013 and since then they've made a complete second robot.

Its really hard but its becoming the norm.

For me at least stop build day really just means we meet a little less but that's mainly because the prior two weeks were spent working our tails off because there was a deadline around the corner. We took a little time to recover but found ourselves spending even later nights before our Week 2 event and similarly Week 4 & 5. The reality is teams end up killing themselves twice now: once before stop build day and the other before their first event.

I would see it as a huge pressure relief for our team if we removed the deadline because the reality is for us with building two machines plus out of bag time before our qualifying events we are investing time and money into machines on a level that doesn't compare to my time as a student in 2008 when we finished the robot(s)*, put it in a crate, and didn't see it until our only regional that year a week later. That was also back in the day when there was no 30lbs of prefabricated materials you could bring to an event to upgrade your robot only functionally identical parts. If you wanted to rebuild your robot you had to do it exclusively at the event on a Thursday as simply as possible.

FRC has changed dramatically since then. We play more, iterate more, modify more, and meet more. The idea of a "6 week build season" no longer exists for most of the teams in FRC who compete non-stop especially with some of the top tier now building two complete practice robots or one with a prototype for software or "other" mechanism development. The short window between development of ideas, design, and the time to build a machine impacts some companies who can provide parts for teams. Giving a potential sponsor a one or two week window for parts doesn't always end with a "yes".

I do believe no stop build day would open many doors for some schools to bring FRC into the classroom allowing more teachers to start teams if they can meet during school and a little after school for a longer period of time before there first event.

*In 2008 we built two machines but they weren't the same for a specific reason.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

It is already possible within the rules to change to a 100% new robot over the course of a whole season.

I am all for open build season. Save us the time and money of a twin robot and let us iterate as much as we want.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Sean,

I agree no-one REALLY knows.

I think we can observe the lack of "stop build" day in FTC, VRC, Vex IQ, and FLL, and draw a few basic conclusions. I know that won't tell us everything, but I think it could tell us a lot.

+1000 to poor survey. I still don't understand that first question :confused: :confused: :confused:

-Mike

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

You should have cheated off Andrew Shreiber like I did for that one. :D

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I personally think that competition quality could really be increased if the deadline was eight weeks rather than six weeks... I'm a team captain right now, and I've seen the same thing happen with my team for the three years I've completed. The stressful rush all the way through, having to ditch schoolwork (often with slipping grades) to finish a robot... it's a lot of pressure on high school students.

Six weeks for some teams, especially those with small amounts of man-hours available to them or shorthanded teams, I think is too short. It makes me really sad every time I see a team struggling to get their robot to function properly... when they're obviously shorthanded, scrounging for resources... and then to be crushed by a much higher-funded, higher-resource team with prestige and four banners hanging off their pits with a practice bot on display, etc.

It's a hard problem. But I think some teams just don't have the man-hours, resources or funding to assemble a competitive robot. I feel like getting steamrolled by another team without ever having a fighting chance doesn't inspire kids into a love of science in technology, but instead kinda... turn them away from it. I don't feel like that's what FIRST stands for.

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Ed,

I agree. This intro is pretty slanted:

:confused:

-Mike

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Don't be so harsh on FIRST :)

I have to agree though. I don't think many of us here are able to generalize anything so specific outside of our own teams. FIRST might get some useful data out of the later parts of the survey though.

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I don't think anybody has pointed this out yet, but if Stop Build Day is eliminated then there is really no reason for a team to reveal their robot at all. If any team can change anything they want at any time, then no team would want to show what their design was because with several weeks another could completely steal their idea make an identical robot.

I know there are a lot of advantages to getting rid of Stop Build Day in terms of evening the playing field for teams that cant afford to make a second robot, but I think sharing the ideas that teams had and giving a quick showcase of what they built (like in a reveal video) does a whole lot more for making better competition than having more time to work on your robot and sacrificing the sharing of robots.

Also +1 to poorly written survey

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I want to share what I wrote in my survey, as I feel it represents a viewpoint that is not voiced much in this thread, which may be more representative of teams that would be thrilled just to have a competitive chance of making it to the World Championships.

"Stop Build Day is an essential component to keeping FIRST equitable. With a longer build season, teams with many resources (money, school support, parent support) will be able to leverage those advantages to an even greater degree to the detriment of less-resourced teams' ability to be competitive and likely, less inspired. This is the same reason why we need to continue limiting the cost of the parts used on the robot.

"Additionally, coaches & volunteers that are stretched thin for those 6 weeks will feel compelled to keep up that break-neck pace for possibly double the time just to stay competitive, leading to much higher rates of burn-out. The way my team is currently structured, we would not be able to effectively compete without Stop Build Day. If FIRST is serious about reaching out to under-served communities, we will choose not to stack the deck further in favor of the privileged.

"The question is: 'Does FIRST want to be a club for the competitive elite or does FIRST want to create an equitable experience for a broad range of schools to realistically compete?' Far less than 20% of teams qualify for the Championship event each year. What can we do that will help that 20% have a high turnover rate?

"When the amount of time is limited, there is much more variance in a competition. This is why the NFL is the most equitable pro sports league in North America. Only 16 games, and single games determine elimination in the playoffs. On 'any given sunday', the worst underdog has a legitimate chance of upsetting the very best team. In any given FRC season, with a limited build season, even a struggling, under-resourced team can have a shot against some of the best teams. Please don't change that."

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Could you explain this more? How would giving teams who only can afford or have time to build one machine be at a disadvantage from getting access to their robot over a long period of time?

Teams at the top end of FRC already have this with practice bot(s) and practice fields.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

What is wrong with making iterative design changes and testing those design changes at a tournament? This is exactly what happens at the other high school level competition the First Tech Challenge and its great!

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As others have said, while the 'idea' of stop build day makes things more equitable in theory, in practice well resourced teams ignore it completely by building a second robot, thus disadvantaging lesser resourced teams.

I would like to see a happy medium -- have a stop build date something along the lines of "no major physical changes after this day", but still allowing driving practice and other minor changes (eg, you can fix things you broke).

Obviously, this is impossible to enforce, and people will lawyer it, and the details are tricky to get right.

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As others have pointed out, I believe you can look at the FTC and VEX program as real world data/examples of what happens with an open build season. You end up with some teams who don't want to be very competitive and they bring what they made and go home and are happy with it. Then you get the competitive teams who enter as many tournaments as they can to make improvements. As everyone knows the real test is when you put your robot on the field at an event and play the game. That is when you know for sure how the designs and mechanisms end up functioning. While I also completely agree the FRC build season should be like the FTC build season I think this would be difficult to do until all of FRC is district based. By having events close to your geographical locations makes it much easier to attend the events, and they are usually short thus requiring less time (if any) out of school. Here in Florida I don't see teams not attending the Orlando Regional just because it is 'early' and they aren't ready.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

That quote was a summary from my entire post, whose main point was how resources would need to be stretched out further with a longer build time. Teams with more resources have more of an ability to stretch them out. (Please note that money is not the only, or even most important, resource.)

I understand your point that less-resourced teams would have more ability to develop a better robot, but wouldn't the same be even truer of a well-resourced team? Or would having no restrictions on stop build not change the way top teams develop their robots?

With Stop Build, all teams are still making some progress in their own way, but it's dampened progress, slowing down the acceleration of the gap between them.

(I think our vantage points on what constitutes a "top" team makes a big difference in this discussion. If we define it as teams that qualify for World Championships, do you think they all have fully-built practice fields? )

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Respectfully, you're wrong. Eliminating stop build doesn't make 254 any better. It would help us spend a little less money and would make competition less stressful since we could implement upgrades at home instead of at the event... But overall it's not going to make our robots any better whatsoever.

Is it going to make the robots better for the teams that can't afford a practice robot and currently don't get to drive at all before showing up at their first event? I don't see how you could possibly argue it wouldn't.

But that's not what this thread is about (it's about the poll a middle school student could have written better), so I'll limit myself to this one response.

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1678 build three robots. Removing stop build day will save us maybe 500-1000 man hours and about $6k. We will still have 16 weeks to build, program and test.

5458 and 6174 (the rookie teams 1678 started) each build one robot. Neither qualified for WCMP in 2016. Neither can do driver practice with us because their one and only robots are in arbitrary plastic bags, while we are training our drive team and programming auto modes simultaneously during the competition season. These two teams have much more to gain from eliminating stop-build day than we do.

Teams already keep a "break neck pace" all season. Maybe you just aren't aware of it?

There are a lot of reasons why many teams never qualify for WCMP, but I'd wager stop-build day widens the gap, rather than leveling the playing field.

Thanks for sharing your opinion, mine is only one more among many.

Best,

-Mike

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

+1

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

To your first point, this has been happening for probably over a decade. The teams with 'many resources' are building two robots and attending multiple events to increase the likelihood of qualifying for world championships. Having a closed build season has not been FIRST equitable as you mentioned, and I believe removing the stop build day will have little change on how those teams operate - we would surely not build two robots and would probably enter more tournaments instead.

We lost two of our FRC mentors to our FTC program exactly for the reason you mentioned the 'break neck speed'. Spouses are now happier and they have both come back for another FTC season. Your team is already now competing with teams who don't stop building, improving, practicing, etc. We always tell our students we don't stop working on the robot until the last match on Einstein at the World Championships. Only then is it 'done'.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

See my post above, but to answer directly: Eliminating stop-build day would have very little effect on how we develop our robot (see Cory's explanation as well)

Many teams that qualify for WCMP do so for off-field reasons (Chairmans, IE, RAS, Waitlist), so I think you'd have to evaluate a certain sub-set of teams at WCMP to understand how stop-build day impacts "top" teams.

I think many "top" teams (district points Qualifiers or Regional Alliance Captain/1st pick winners) have either a practice bot(s), practice field, or both. That's just my guess though :o

Best,

-Mike

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Respectfully, there are very few teams in the same league as 254! :D

I would be curious to know how far down the FRC totem pole your sentiments run true. If you represent the top 1% who make a habit of winning multiple regionals each year, does your statement about 254's lack of value from eliminating stop build hold true for the top 5%? 10%? 20%?

If we graphed (the value-added to robot performance by eliminating stop-build) vs. (some measure of competitive performance), I would assume that some parts would show a mildly rising slope while further on it may level off. Perhaps my feelings about this proposal are indicative of where my team is on that curve.

I appreciate the reply and information. Perhaps the dialogue on CD can be even more informative for FIRST than the poorly worded survey. :D

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Most of the elite and many of the mid tier teams in FRC are already building well past the end of the season. WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE, multiple competitions, practice robots, etc Allow teams like mine to barely notice "Stop Build Day" at all. The elite teams aren't putting their tools down after build season is over they are finding ways to attend 3+ competitions before Championships and they are scrimmaging with near by teams on the other weekends with their practice robots to get even better. Any team that isn't putting in more time after build season is either choosing not to or doesn't have the resource to do it. "Stop Build Day" isn't keeping low resource teams competitive it's dramatically removing their ability to iterate and perfect their designs. It's stopping them from the awesome of experience of practicing with friends and learning from them without the pressure of a competition. It's stopping volunteers from holding pre-inspection nights leading up to events to get teams ready for inspection and allow them to fully utilize the limited practice time at events. "Stop Build Day" needs to be abolished.

If you aren't compelled already to manage your time and continue improving I don't think getting rid of "Stop Build Day" is going to change that much. Teams that are trying for a world title are working at unbelievable and inspirational levels. "Stop Build Day" isn't leveling the playing field it's making the playing a mountain that only the teams that push even harder to get the resources necessary to climb are able to summit.


I don't agree, lets make our district, regional, district/state Championships events even better so that teams that come away from any FRC event feel as inspired as teams that leave the championship. We shouldn't be bringing the top down to meet the bottom. Lets raise the bottom, put in safety nets if we need to for teams that fall off and find a way inspire more students at an even greater level. Making the competitive teams worse doesn't increase inspiration. We shouldn't ask anyone to slow down so that others can catch up. Lets have everyone work together to bring everyone up to top speed.

The problem with that statement is that it's not true. Sure the underdog always has a chance but they do in any sport. Someone can get injured, or a robot can break at just the wrong time for that alliance. Every team has a chance the problem right now is the lowest resource teams have even less of a chance against the elite then they ever have. At one point there was only a championship and everyone largely had the same amount of time to build, then their were a few regionals around the country but going to multiple was rare, now if you have the money you could attend 4-7 events before Championships and there is more than enough data that proves as you go to more events and iterate your robot, train your drivers and improve your strategy you're likely to increase your performance. Going to more events, building practice bots, and iterating with the withholding allowance currently takes a lot of resources. Abolishing "Stop Build Day" would allow more teams to use the time that many teams are already using, if they wanted to.

#BanTheBag

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I couldn't agree more, and I love your hashtag!!

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Really interesting. I can't say I'm surprised given the history of the programs, but it's nice to hear some of the actual history.

All those darn edge cases, man...

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

All the questions except for the last one are pretty bad, but the last one is rather important, I think, so claims that there won't be anything useful from this seem to me a bit overblown.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I did a poll in an Arizona FRC group on Facebook during the season asking which teams had a practice bot. 13 of the 50 Arizona teams confirmed that they do in fact build a practice bot. That is just of those that responded too. I'm relatively sure there are others too but can't confirm for sure. Even with 13 though, 25% of Arizona teams have a huge competitive edge over the other 75%. Now none of the Arizona FRC teams are a 254 and I'd imagine removing build day would be a big help even to the teams that build practice robots here. However, I personally think it would be an even bigger help to those that don't have the resources to build one.
-----
Another point I'd like to make is that bag day removal would help balance the scales for regional vs district teams. I know the goal is to make every region a district but that isn't going to happen anytime soon for a lot of places including the south west. District teams get more hands on time with the competition robot from more matches per event and two of them, two 6 hour open bag periods in their shop, and if they do well, a state championship. Overall they get way more practice and development with the competition bot than a regional team even if the regional team also builds a practice bot. Giving all teams equal access to the competition robot would be a way to make things more fair between a district and regional team. This I feel is especially important when it comes to the two championships where North got almost all the districts and South got mostly regional teams. Who knows, maybe removing bag day would even make South champs a much stronger event than what it is predicted to be, especially for low to mid tier teams.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

While I agree that greater time periods tend to minimize variance, your next statement really doesn't seem to hold water.

Here was an article I found which pretty decisively shows that MLB has far more variance than the NFL:
http://harvardsportsanalysis.org/201...he-postseason/




I'm not sure about this claim though:
I guess I would have to better understand how you define "a shot against" to assess the validity of this statement. If you mean captaining the winning Einstein alliance, you are probably incorrect. If you mean captaining a regional winning alliance, you are also probably incorrect. If you mean any given qualification match, where the under-resourced team happened to get decent-ish partners and the "better team" has below-average partners, you are probably correct.

I can crunch some numbers for you if you want to make a more quantifiable hypothesis.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Just to give you another data point. I would consider my former team to be in the top 10-15% in the last 5 years. We build two robots. We have a partial test/practice field and access to full field from our friends. Eliminating stop build day will also not help us get any better. We are already getting the best robot we are capable of to our events. We already worked as many hours as we are capable of putting in. Without stop build day, we will save money, meet less often during the 6 weeks which is good for students and mentors and a lot less stressful. We will be able to spend more time helping other teams to get their robot working to their fullest potential. Right now we help other teams but we have to worry about getting our competition robot finish and into a bag. After that we can't help other less resourceful teams because their robot was already in a bag. I hope you see my point.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

That's a very good idea.

How Does Abolishing "Stop Build Day" Fit FIRST's Strategic Pillars

Expand Access and Participation, Broad and Deep:

• A Short build season is one of the hardest parts about FRC for new teams. More time allows for more time to get help and work with veteran teams. Abolishing “Stop Build Day” makes FRC less scary for new teams.
• More out of bag time allows for more demonstrations and scrimmage events during the season.
• Level the field for international teams: Teams outside of North America have a very hard time competing at multiple events. By abolishing “Stop Build Day” new areas with very opportunities for events could hold smaller unofficial scrimmages and gain experience during the season.

Increase Diversity:

• In conjunction with expanding access to new areas around the world we will dramatically add to our cultural diversity of the program.
• By abolishing “Stop Build Day” we are able to dramatically reduce the cost of fielding a competitive team making it less expensive for global expansion and deep expansion to schools and areas that cannot currently afford an FRC team.

Scale Efficiently:
- The elite teams in FRC are amazing.
- New teams need every advantage they can get and one of the biggest is how open and caring FRC teams are towards new teams. By abolishing “Stop Build Day”:

• Veteran mentors could help more young teams since losing a day of build is less important when there are more of them.
• Young teams have more time to learn, compete, and be inspired by veteran teams during the season.
• Local scrimmages and practice sessions could reduce the need for dramatic increases in events to meet team demand as more and more teams wish to compete more often.
• More time to fix the problems introduced by inexperienced teams. Pre-inspection events can be held prior to an event that allow young teams to get ready for their first inspection and not waste precious practice time

Ensure Sustainability:
Spending countless resources traveling to multiple events, building multiple robots and spare parts for them is not a sustainable solution.
- Abolish “Stop Build Day” and

• Teams can spend more of their money on growing their STEM program to reach more students.
• Have more time to support and elevate young and rookie teams.
• Hold demonstrations and workshops to increase team growth in their areas.
• Hold in season scrimmages that let teams compete more often for less cost to the program.

Achieve Broad Recognition:
The best way I can think of to achieve broad recognition is to increase the level of play on the field. Spectators don’t want to watch robots that are inoperable, uncontrollable, and aren’t meeting game objectives.
- By abolishing “Stop Build Day” we can

• Increase the level of play on the field.
• Reduce the number of robots that are inoperable during a match.
• Give teams more time with their robot to iterate and improve when there are errors.
• Give teams more time to work on programming and increase the challenge that the majority teams can meet.
• Put on a better show!

#BanTheBag

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Proposal: instead of eliminating Stop Build Day, restrict what can be brought in to the event. 5 lb of upgrade parts, unlimited raw material* including COTS, everything else must be exact spare parts to something on the robot.

Won't stop driver practice and development of stuff, but it'll sure make the stuff developed simpler...


BTW, this post mostly in jest, as I've seen what happens when moving from this sort of system to the current system. I think the competitiveness has gone up across the board. On the other hand, the "push harder longer in the shop" has also gone up, and the usage of the 30-lb allowance has skyrocketed by weight to, well, 29.9 lb for a lot of mid-level teams.

So, if I may summarize: The introduction of a significant "withholding" which could be used for upgrades increased the competitiveness of the average team, if they took advantage of it, while increasing the amount of time spent after the build season spent on improving the robots. I could see elimination of the stop-build having the exact same effect as the increase of "withholding", and I could see it easing the burnout. Either way, effect unknown.

*Can be trimmed for handling purposes but not to final size/shape

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I personally find myself somewhat in the middle. I agree, especially coming from a team that only builds one bot (and sometimes barely that), that Stop Build Day is a big obstacle for weaker teams. It means we get little practice, and can only watch as the FRC elites practice strategy and test designs using practice bots.

HOWEVER, I do appreciate some of the sentiment behind Stop Build Day. It correctly shows the deadlines that exist in the "real world". I also find it inspires my team to work harder and think faster, as the pressure often creates positive stress that pushes us to do our best. Still, the tight schedule makes it hard for students with literally any other interests to have time for those things, or even grades. And the time is so short, sometimes it leads to burn-outs instead of a competitive environment.

In general, I lean towards a compromise of sorts. A build week of 8-10 weeks gives teams way more time than we've had in the past. It also serves as a stepping stone, if need be. If it's an overwhelming success, FIRST can go from there and consider nixing Stop Build Day. All in all, I feel it's the best solution, and leaves room for additional adjustments in the future.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Very few projects I've worked on in the real world require things to be hands off for months at a time before being used immediately ready to go after coming out of shipping. There will always be a deadline in FRC. The start of your next match! No other machine sport has this deadline. If hands off time and deadlines are some sort of special sauce why haven't they trickled down to FTC or FLL? FRC is the only one to get this special thing, why? Shouldn't NASCAR try to adopt it if it makes things so much better?

How would this work? Are you proposing pushing back the start of competitions or moving forward kickoff? Are we stopping build between Week 3 and 4 of competition season?

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

+1

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

JABianchi,
thanks for sharing your post. While it may be a minority viewpoint here on CD, I find some similar valid thoughts and concerns while highlighting some things I wanted to respond to.
Being from Hawaii, this is a disadvantage for obvious reasons. We spend a considerable amount of time traveling, making up schoolwork, and competing, that there would be little to no time to iterate or practice driving at all. Flying a robot to each and every event is a great disadvantage vs. driving your robot to an event. By trying to get the same experience as a district team, we also end up spending a lot more money competing in 3 regional events plus the Championships (and off-season events). Even in Hawaii, we have to spend money to stay in Waikiki because the travel time during work days can be as long as 2 hours one way from Waialua to the event.
As an above average resource team, being from Hawaii limits our ability to take advantage of that, regardless of whether Stop Build Day continued or ended.
My main concern in mentor burnout. I dont need data or any more experience to understand that getting rid of a Stop Build Day will put pressure on our team, both students and mentors, to work a longer period of time at an intense level with what little time we would have left.
If the majority of people want to get rid of Stop Build Day, I can accept it and adjust, or decide to quit FRC. I believe that majority rules. We had to build and adjust our program over the years to try and stay competitive. The possiblity of getting rid of the 6 weeks of build season is no different.

And IMO, using VEX is a poor example of why we should get rid of the 6 week build season! Building a completely different VEX robot between events is NOT the same as bringing a somewhat different iterated FRC robot to your next event. Not even close! We spend a lot of time doing both.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Glenn,

Really great feedback. Hawaii teams definitely are in a unique situation.

One quick thought. If there was no bag, could you design your robot to disassemble into three or four major pieces and take it on the plane with you? This could significantly reduce the amount of time 359 is without their robot. You could re-assemble at your hotel or a host team's shop once you arrive.

I mention this since 125 took their robot in a check-in bag to Arizona in 2016. It was pretty small, even in the bag. Being out of the bag would give you a lot of flexibility to break your robot apart strategically and fit it in a few check-in bags.

Not an ideal solution, but could be workable.

-Mike

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Frank said a while back on a FUN episode iirc that Bag and Tag would be staying so I do find this poll kinda interesting.

Bag and Tag is something that I do want to see go away mainly because many teams including mine can not afford a second robot. This puts us at a pretty distinct disadvantage through the season and especially by champs.

For teams like mine the bag does actually mean a ton less work because we can only work on withholding but for teams with practice robots the season really does not ramp down. So, in that sense the mentor/student burnout argument is kinda invalidated.

I think removing bag and tag will help in a few ways. First middle of the road teams can now compete with the top level teams a little closer. Second the lower level teams can be helped by the top and mid level teams a little more comfortably as everyone now has more time to work. Overall removing bag and tag to me will bring up the bottom and middle tiers of FIRST attempting slightly to close the performance gap.

F4 did its 1st episode on Bag and Tag and I recommend everyone check it out. Its a little rough since it was the first episode ever but some good opinions and ideas were presented.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

+1 to Allen and Mike's comments about leveling the playing field by reducing the need to build a 2nd bot and one robot teams getting more practice time.

The main advantage I see for unlimited robot access, is to educate students that the design process involves continuous improvement. This is something that is currently missing from our program.

To FIRST:
Give it a try. Get feedback.
If it doesn't work out, do something different the year after.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I am still not sure what the first bunch of questions meant. It looks like the only thing that everyone agrees on is that the survey was very poorly written (intentionally or not).

A couple of points that no one has made about stop build day and "fairness".

1) Not all teams get the same build time with a stop build day.

I know that with the team I have mentored the most during the last ten years, the school has been our biggest enemy. Many times we were not allowed to work due to school holidays, lack of teacher support, etc. Eliminating stop build day would allow more time to work, and less stress on mentors.

2) Not all teams abide by stop build day.

The dirty little secret that no-one wants to bring up. I know for a fact that some teams ignore stop build day (one such team was on the winning alliance at at least one event). Don't flame me for bringing it up, I know that it happens. This causes a disadvantage to teams that comply with the rules

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

To address the original post:

Survey poorly written - yep.
FIRST will make whatever conclusion they want from the data - maybe.

Now, my color commentary: I think a lot of newer folks don't realize the bag and tag is a vestige of the time where we all had to crate up our robots on what used to be termed "Ship Day" and they would sit in some drayage location until whatever competition was next. This was a practice that came about to ensure fairness among teams that might be 5 miles or 500 miles from their competition. With the increasing amount of teams, FIRST decided to test out bag-and-tag and put the onus on teams to get their robot to competitions rather than leaning on FedEx to donate even more free shipping (except for championship, and all the other exceptions listed in the administrative manual). Without crates, bags were put in place to simulate the same locking up.

Some more resource-laden teams figured out that with the robot shipped off, it'd be good to have a 2nd robot to use for testing, practice, and upgrades. Other teams caught on, and then there was the "arms" race.

That being said, I've talked with newer teams that only build one robot, and they are motivated to build a 2nd robot because "all the good teams do that" and they recognize the advantage of still being able to do development after the first robot is made inaccessible.

Is it good that younger teams are striving to be like more established teams by developing business plans to achieve those goals of obtaining more resources? Yes. Could the efforts and resources be better spent not building a 2nd robot? Possibly.

It's a very complex issue, but I did find Cory's post about how bag and tag doesn't really affect how they go about designing/testing very interesting. To his team, bag and tag is a speed bump, not a wall like it is for other teams.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

:(

This makes me sad. I can't think of a worse example to set for student than this.

Never heard of it happening before, besides on complete accident (rookie team that doesn't know to bag, etc.)

-Mike

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

For reference - 125's robot was packed into 2 checked bags. The arm/shooter mechanism and the chassis were rather simple to separate (in fact, the arm was light enough to withhold entirely). From my understanding this worked pretty well. A note was left in the Pelican case with each component to prevent the TSA from opening the bag itself. This worked fairly well.

125 also shipped tools. These were done in KoP totes instead of Pelican cases, unfortunately the airlines left the tool totes on the tarmac during a rain storm leading to about 2" of standing water in them. If bringing things by air please consider putting anything that would be negatively impacted by being submerged in water for a long time in a bag.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

How ironic.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

+1

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

I am sort of on the fence about bag and tag. I like the hard stop. It is more of a transition for us since we continue to work with the practice robot. We focus more on driver development and robot refinement after stop build. On the other hand stop build has a lot of baggage that already been discussed on this thread. It is probably time to change it.

One of the thus far unstated advantages that will benefit the high resource teams is they will be showing up to each event with an essentially completely rebuilt robot rather than having to do maintenance at the event. Granted other teams will have the same opportunity.

For no bag day to really benefit mid level teams, they are going to need the discipline to finish the robot around the six week mark to give them time to iterate and practice. I leave the top tier teams out of this because they already have the discipline.

Teams have to decide how much resources to put to the robot competition. Not having bag day really doesn't change this.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

This is a point I'm really stuck on. I hate the design convergence in VEX. I hate that teams, if they're driven enough, can completely scrap their robot between events and copy the most successful design they've found online. My VexU team is about to start our 2nd 9-week Release schedule for a Fall Scrimmage. We'll have another one before our Spring Qualifier. And another one before Champs. We'll have completed 4 separate build seasons. In the process we'll probably lose half of our active members again.

Obviously FRC is more complicated and it would be a lot harder to pull off copying a Week 1 robot that you see for your Week 6 or 7 event. Design convergence with some subsytems definitely currently happens by the end of the season, but those are mostly add-on subsystems, not a defining part of the robot.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

You must really have hated 973's 2015 and 2016 robots...

What you wrote already happens. 1678 in 2013 is another example.

-Mike

Edit: I suppose my point hinges on how you specify a "defining part of the robot"

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

But design convergence doesn't happen in the real world!

Except for cell phones, computers, chip manufacturing, cars, shoes.... Kicked the ball in my own goal again!

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

It is worth pointing out that off-season events show that robot diversity is still maintained even when there is less of a time limit. We don't walk into CowTown and see a bunch of 254 and 118 clones every year. I think teams would still rather put out their own work, even if it's not necessarily the winning option.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

That's probably because teams don't want to spend a lot of money and time on a robot for the offseason. It might be a little bit different with a championship on the line.

That being said there's already a bit of design convergence with withholding allowance. See canburgulars last year.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

One thing I haven't seen mentioned was stress on machining sponsors. Eliminating bag and tag would reduce stress on machine sponsors as well.

The team I helped with had access to manual mills and lathes and made 90-95% of the custom components needed, but some complicated parts would get cnced, laser cut/water jetted at a sponsors shop. They were willing to set aside profitable work to give us fast turn around times. Most shops in the area would give 2-4 week lead times for normal quoted work. Giving a longer time table for the sponsors to finish parts during machine down time would save them money as well. We all know how critical sponsors are to the success of FIRST, giving them some more time can only help them.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Sometimes I get caught on this too, but as Dean has said time and time again, FIRST is about more than the competition. I would much rather see my students get inspired by a successful design, figure out why it works, make their own, and have it be successful at the next competition, than to have kids leave a competition saying "man, I wish we thought of that." While its true that the above can be accomplished within the confines of Stop Build Day, SBD makes this much harder.

I don't mentor in FRC solely to win competitions (319 didn't do that until 2016). I mentor in FRC because it inspired me to make a career out of robots. There's no denying that a robot that works is more inspiring to the students that built it than a robot that doesn't work. Removing bag day makes inspiration easier to achieve and I'm all for it.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

FIRST design convergence will never, ever, in any circumstance, exist to the same extent that it does in VEX, for a few reasons:

• Vex uses standard hardware all around, making robots look similar and facilitating bolt for bolt copies.
• The Vex season is almost year round, allowing more time for copies and iteration.
• It takes far less time and far fewer resources to build a Vex robot than it does to build an FRC robot
• While Vex allows for some design flexibility, the COTS centric nature limits the number of highly successful and visible design variations to copy. Meanwhile, if you asked FRC teams everywhere which robot they should copy, I think you would get a lot of different answers.

This isn't to say design convergence isn't a cause for concern or anything, just that everyone's "nightmare scenario" of completely identical robots just won't happen. If it would happen, then we would see hundreds of Ri3D clones, right? Even in the peak year for clones, at worst we would see teams copy the concept with their own spin on it for the most part, with just a few bolt for bolt copies.

---

The other criticism of ending stop build I want to address is deadlines. Some have argued a hard deadline is good practice for the real world, so we need bag day to simulate that. The main problem with this logic is that, it's just completely backwards. Bag day is a soft deadline! You get to keep working on the withholding allowance. Even with no withholding, you get to use a practice robot, and plan for COTS upgrades at competition. A deadline of the actual competition day with a no-bag system would be an Actual Hard Deadline. Similarly, having everyone stop at the same time would also still happen at competitions. Everyone at the competition would have just as much time to work on the robots as everyone else at the competition!

---

I do recognize there are plenty of arguments to keep the bag, and I don't think they are all invalid. But I think once we get over our fear of change, it would do more good than harm to get rid of it. I'll post more thoughts at a later time.

Re: [FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey
 

Perhaps the result of this would be seeing the expansion of unofficial scrimmage events into the competition season? If you want more time to practice and iterate, there would be nothing stopping you from getting a few local teams together to practice like teams already do in Week 0 events, but in the middle of the season.

Plus, a lot of iteration can be done just by observing other events through livestreams. Not an ideal solution, but I still think having equal (unlimited) access time is a FAR better equalizer, even for teams that do only get one event.