Re: Number of Matches at the Championship
 

what if we were to add another day to championships that would give the possibility to have more matches.

Re: Number of Matches at the Championship
 

Figure out a solution to getting the funds to rent the Dome and GWCC for another day (which can't be cheap), staff the fields (which isn't cheap, as we volunteers tend to be awful hungry), pay the extra hotel room nights for the hundreds of teams, and persuade the hundreds of schools and employers to let their students and mentors go for an extra day, and we'll call it a deal. :)

Re: Number of Matches at the Championship
 

Believe me, I am in favor of having more matches... one or two bad matches can put your team out of the top 20.
Being on drive team, it seems like your always on the move. If there were more matches with the same number of fields, that would be crazy. If there was a way to both have the pits closer to the field, and a way to have more fields, then I think the idea of more matches could be plausible.

However, by the time Nats roll around, there has been plenty of time to research and scout the teams that will be there. Regional winners have been announced, and Divisions have been released.
This is when the most scouting should occur- between regionals and Nats. You have time to research robots, and see what teams are going to be good in your division. You should already be going into Nats knowing what teams you either want to pick, or teams you want to get picked by. However, this doesn't mean that you should be closed minded. There are always teams that you don't expect it to make it, but do. And those usually are the best ones. (Just because I'm on 340, and its fresh in my mind, look at 2004, with 1126, 67, and 340 in Newton. Nobody expected that to happen, with having at least one team out of the top 20.)

So, this is just my insight, and thoughts...

Re: Number of Matches at the Championship
 

More matches would be all fine and dandy but remember if your team is not ready to perform that may say just as much as the ranking system.

If you lose one game in the NCAA tournament your out of national championshipo contention. It also very similar with the BCS in college football.

In FIRST at the Championships marketing, and scouting is all that evens the playing field. If not for these 2 then a lot of the best teams in the nation could potentially never get their chance.

If you expect it to be a championship its going to be tough, and adding more games may really not be the solution.

Re: Number of Matches at the Championship
 

I think that more matches could be possible. Thursday is used for practice right, well you have already been to 2 or 3 regionals on your machine and some have a practice bot. Since the championships are earlier this year and there is not a big layoff, you could make it to where everyone gets one practice round which is 2 matches of practice which should be enough. you start the qualifying round around 1 on thursday and that will allow each team to get at least 2 or 3 more matches in, plus what they get on friday and saturday. This will allow for at least 10 matches and not even interfere with all of the money and extra day it would take for the venue or the teams to take out of thier pockets. It is a reasonable thought. :)

Re: Number of Matches at the Championship
 

Let me just point out one of many logistical issues that would arise, if that were to be implemented. You'd need to rearrange inspections. Last year, with our crew of inspectors, we were working hard all day Thursday, and a bit on Friday morning. So you'd either need many more inspectors (roughly 2 to 2.5 times as many, I'd estimate) and a few more scales and sizing boxes, or you'd need to open the pits for inspections on Wednesday afternoon (after the uncrating) and convince teams to get their inspections done at that point.

Re: Number of Matches at the Championship
 

Maybe Im looking at this differently, but to me the point of adding more matches isn't to make it more fair for everyone else. It's to make sure the top 8 are as close to the best 8 robots in the division as possible.

For example, look at Archimedies in 2005. That division was absolutely loaded. Yet a bunch of powerhouse teams ended up seeded super low, and a bunch of weaker teams ended up seeding high, because there aren't enough matches to eliminate luck influencing the standings.

I think we should add more matches not to help teams that have bad luck and lose a match or two, but to push the ones that performed extremely well to the top, rather than have teams that had good partners and didnt play anyone tough end up above teams that dominated their competition, but got pitted against each other and lost a match.

Re: Number of Matches at the Championship
 

a GTR Field setup would work fine, and maybe extending the times on friday would work...

for example

opening ceremonies start at 8am, events begin at 9am, and SHOULD end at about 5.

maybe extend that to 7 or 8pm, with six minute periods. that means 20-30 more matches.

start it back up at 0 on Saturday, as usual

alliance parings are at 12pm instead of 11:45am

have 12 teams in the eliminations.

and the event would end at 8, perfect time slot on ESPN or ESPN2 in mid april on a Saturday afternoon. what else could be on..... world series of poker?????

lol, but yea, this is probably the best idea.

maybe extend the radio channel availability list or natioals

Re: Number of Matches at the Championship
 

Our team has a philosophy that says every student gets to touch the bot. Whenever we ship the bot at least half of them know the robot in and out. Out of that the drives know the most about the bot and the job of the lead of each system kind of tells the drivers what to look for if errors happen etc etc. In most situations our drivers can take care of almost anything they need to from re-crimping a lead all the way to re-wrapping a wire. In the past year I only remember changes happening in the pit when we had enough time to.

I believe that if every team educated their drivers about their robots, than it would be much easier. I think it is crucial for the drivers (including the human player) that are on the field with the robot the most, know how to fix the most basic robot adjustments. That being said I believe the second part of your argument is flawed due to the lack of experience of the average drivers (from what you said), so now I get to make my argument.

I think that it is perfectly reasonable to add the new fields if any. I think one more would be prime and that Einstein would take a little longer but possible nonetheless. I think that even though it would take a little bit longer that it could make more matches more

Since USUALLY most repairs are minor, that if our teams trained our drivers during or after the break and that the drivers could do most of the simple stuff than it would be MUCH more possible to make more matches.

EDIT: To help with the scouting issue, at the LSR there was a scouting database. If we assigned a few people from teams than we could EASILY team up with very accurate scouting information. It would be just as easy and for the teams with more than 7 people, (6 for watching matches and one scribe compiling all of the data on a computer), to spare it would be a breeze for more accurate scouting.


Pavan.