Running Out of Tetras
 

Before anything, I would like to congratulate teams 330, 67, and 503, they played well and beat us fair and square.

However, after our first match with them, an Innovation First guy came by (I honestly don't know who) and told me (I was wearing the bib) that they would not move tetras from the human load over to the auto load if it ran out. Distressed by this, I went to our head referee and asked him if this was true, didn't the rules say that they would move tetras? He left, the referees conferred, and he returned to say that they would not move tetras. He said told us that he spoke with the head of all head referees and that it was decreed that tetras would not be moved.

So we played our second match, and lost 60-63. We had no rows while blue had two rows. The Autoloader had one tetra left. At the end of our third match, the Autoloader had zero tetras left. The last tetra was picked up by the Chickens at around the 10 second mark. I honestly do not believe that our team could have grabbed another tetra and capped it on the needed goal in the last 8 or so seconds when we made it back to the autoloader, however, I was wondering if anyone could tell me why, when, and / or how the rule involving not moving tetras came into place?

Once again, this is not meant to be begrudging at all, we were beaten, and beaten by a strong, quality alliance, congratulations to you, all of you. Congratulations really to everyone who put a robot on the field and made it move, that, in and of itself, is and accomplishment.

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

My team, 175, was told the same thing after we were knocked out of the semi's on einstein.

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

According to team update #2 that should not have happened.

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

According to the Driver meeting on Thursday night also. I distinctly remember the head ref saying that the field hands would attempt to keep the stacks balanced so nobody runs out. I can only assume that the logistics of having so many people standing around the field made it impossible or too difficult for einstein, though one would hope an attempt would be made and the answer would actually be "We'll try to keep up with keeping the loaders full, but we might not be able to" Or perhaps letting the teams dictate if they needed more tetras on the human or auto side....

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

We did ask if we could simply move one stack from the human side to the auto side before the match began. They said no.

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

I think it makes sense that they don't make an attempt to put tetras on the autoloader. It would just add one more distraction to the drivers/human players/audience to have yet another thing running back and forth with tetras. It would (IMO) be a waste of time. Just go to the human loader. It takes (on average) about two seconds longer.

Dave

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

Not if you're already on the opposite side of the field, add in drive time, if you're good at the auto load then it's more of a 3-4 second time loss in loading. At the 10 second mark, you can't waste time driving across the field, getting a tetra, and driving back across again to cap, it just doesn't make sense.

They moved tetras for us on Archimedes, and it was not in any way, shape or form a distraction.

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

MANY robots out there don't have that option. There's a lot of robots that are strictly human/auto. Running out on either side would be crippling, thus the need to restock. In addition, the teams were running all day under the assumption that there would be restocking, so forcing a potential last minute strategy change is kind of odd. I'm confused that they wouldn't just move a human player stack over there if the team requested, since that would've solved everything with little real trouble.

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

Hi Guys,

This is the arm operator from team 503. We were having those troubles too. O man i was dying with how many close calls there were. I was honestly scared about that thunder chicken/atom bot alliance. When we lost that first loss, I was nervous. But we had made the mistake of letting you guys down into our home row. We sprung back, and boy it was a good two matchs. WOW! This season has been a lot of firsts for our team. Regional chairmans @ detroit, highest score of the season (132), newton division winners, national winners. Congrats to all the teams this year for another great FIRST season. Hope to see you at nationals next year.

BHOP

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

In out match with 71 AKA the beast, I was down to 1 tetra left and they actually ran out. So I had to give them my last tetra so they could load their 4th tetra on the robot. Right before I had to load our robot they brought us new tetras

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

Yes, they didn't bring us any tetras. They stopped doing that as of Einstein, what I want to know is why.

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

considering the strength and obviously exceeding talent of the teams at the competition, they should have had more tetras at the auto and human loading zones in the first place. it was their job to make sure that they never 'run out'. as a human player, it was annoying having to ask our alliance partners to share their stacks.

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

There's always been a limited number of tetras, though. This has been defined since day one, and hasn't changed. It's the same every year. The only real issue is that tetras were being shuffled and then suddenly weren't.

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

I worked the autoloader on Einstein. We were told to have 9 tetras for each loader and we had a backup pile of 4 if we needed them. We never actually ran out, so I didn't see that it was much of a problem, but there have always been a limited number of tetras on the field.

Re: Running Out of Tetras
 

That is incorrect. I was the referee standing in between the red alliance autoloaders, and they never ran out on Einstein. At the end of one of the matches, there were only the two sitting on the autoloader, but there were never zero left.

I am unsure of what caused the no tetra shifting decision to occur, but I became aware of it a few matches into the finals. I questioned it, was told that a decision had been made, and we finished the finals this way.

I would like to clarify that during no match of the finals were there zero tetras available on the autoloading station for the red alliance on Einstein.

Wetzel