Re: Changes over the years?
 

Yes, for the elimination rounds, #1 seed was automatically paired with #5, 2-6, 3-7, 4-8. We (45) were #1 in Epcot for our division, and were auto-paired with another team who was good at doing the exact same thing we were good at. This was not good for that year, as each of the 4 robots on the field needed to be good at different things.

As for the alliance pairings, it was a mess. We got a sheet that showed 8 teams who were in match 1 or 2, and the next 8 who were in matches 3 or 4, and so on. Your alliance would go out to the field, and the que-ers would herd you into a corral (all 8 teams), and then tell you which 4 were on the same alliance. THEN, you had all of 5 minutes to strategize for the match. This was also the last year FIRST allowed 2 coaches on the field. This 5 minute debate was difficult, to say the least, especially since teams had to choose (and give in) which tasks to perform. Many arguments happened during this 5 minute debate.

FIRST, in 2002, decided that these arguments were the cause of too many adult coaches, so they reduced the number to 1 coach per alliance. Oh... and they also let us see the alliance match schedule in the morning on Friday, so there were no surprises. That year, there were less debates, and FIRST attributed it to the loss of one of the coaches. Many people say hogwash to that, and know that it is because we no longer had to do the last minute debate that was required in 2001.

Andy B.

Re: Changes over the years?
 

YESSSSS!!!!! I got the bonus 10% thing right!!! Woo-hooo!

I can't believe I forgot about the surprise pairings. That was terrible. This was also the case in 2000. In the 2000 game, you knew the 4 teams involved in a match, but you had no idea who was your partner and who was your opponent until the match immediately prior to your match started, then the queuer told you what the pairings were. Then you frantically had to settle on a strategy.

I'm sure everyone is aware that every year the IRI experiments with some rule changes. Well, announcing the pairings as the schedule is published is one of the many rules that were tried at the IRI that have since been incorporated by FIRST.

Here's another thing I forgot: PENALTIES. Penalties were added in 2004, if I'm not mistaken. Prior to this it was either DQ or no foul. There was a lot of chatter on these boards suggesting that there needed to be more levels of fouls rather than just a DQ. Therefore, penalties that resulted in point subtractions were introduced.

***** 2001 story*****************************************

One last thing (boy, I can really talk non-stop about FIRST): Andy is correct about 2001 being brutal in strategy discussions. I felt BAD about that year. I'll never forget what happened at the Championship. We (308 for me back then) had a GREAT robot that year - one of the best.

We were near the top of the qualifying standings in our division but our previous two matches were ruined by bad luck involving partner teams (toppling goals, knocking the bridge off the pivot, etc.). The #1 ranked team at the time (33 - the Killer Bees) was averaging about 350 QPs per match, and we knew we could score a minimum of 420 a match if we can just get our partners to get out of our way and do nothing but cross the field and sit in the endzone.

After the two unfortunate matches, Kevin (our other coach at the time, since we could have two) and I thought it out and decided that is was time to be brutally honest in an effort to make sure we seeded as high as we could. Our next match involved 494 (the Martians - future World Champions), which had a good robot themselves. I remember the 5 minute strategy session, which went like this:

Me: You guys can go under the bar, right?

494 mentor (I think it was Pat Major): That's right.

Me: Good. We want you to go straight under the bar and sit in the endzone.

494 Mentor: But we can...

Me: I want you to go under the bar, and sit in the enzone. Just keep out of our way.

494 (puzzled and hurt look): You want what? But...

Me: (I carry on with the other teams).

God, I felt bad. But Andy can attest to that being the case very often that year. We had a very large discussion about that at the IRI that year. Oh boy.

Re: Changes over the years?
 

I love this thread.
Thinking back to when we started in '00 to now, and reading all of these posts bring back a lot of good memories.
Some years were a little better than others, but overall, every year its always fun and the changes were always positive.

The recent alliance pairings change from 1-8 then 8-1 was a GREAT change!
It makes even a #1 seed do some good scouting, especially for smaller regionals.

In my opinion, it doesnt really affect things at championship as much as it does for regionals. 2007 comes to mind where an 8th seed could be as great as a 1, including the fact that an 8th seed won.

Re: Changes over the years?
 

Chris & Andy, you're bringing back all sorts of memories with your posts, especially the stories about 2001.

The disaster that was the 2001 elimination auto-pairing rules that were described previously led to problems, as Andy mentioned, and 'ethical' questions, as we encountered. Before our last match at Championship, one of the last of Saturday morning, we were outside of the top 8 by a considerable margin, but not so far out, so a good round would put us around 7 or 8. We knew that we wanted to be paired with 33, the top seed, and we had a feeling they wanted to pick us, but that couldn't happen if we were in the top 8. Our team was faced with the question: score the most points possible and risk being auto-paired with someone other than 33 or throw the match? We knew that the only fair option for our partners' sake was to try our best and rankings be damned. We went out and had a good match, scored a bunch of points, and came within a small ball or two of becoming the 8th seed. We were 9th, which allowed 33 and 254 to pick us.

I remember a similar discussion with you at IRI. Beatty was #1 seed and picked 33, you were #2 seed and picked us. I was assuming that you wanted us to use our ramps because there were plenty of other robots capable of dragging goals that you could have picked. When we started talking strategy for the elimination rounds, I brought that up.

Me: what's the plan, you're going to push the goals up our ramps?

You / Kevin: no, you're dragging the goal over the bridge, you're not using your ramp

Me: but ...

You / Kevin: (moving on ...)


That story reminds me of another rule change, but I can't remember the year it was made. In 2001, and possibly later, you could build different appendages for your robot and use them interchangeably as long as no single configuration was over weight. Assuming the weight limit was 130 lbs, this means that you could build an 80 lb robot base and attach a 50 lb arm to it. In the next match you could remove the arm and add a completely different 50 lb appendage. One restriction is that all the robot pieces together were limited by the KOP motor rules, which means you couldn't use 2 FP motors on your arm and use 2 FP motors on another appendage, since you were using 4 FP motors when only 2 were allowed.

Our 2001 robot took full advantage of this rule, which is what allowed us to have a ramp, a goal grabber, and our "Beatty arms," which were an extremely poor substitute for their namesake.

Re: Changes over the years?
 

I wish they would bring back "true" modularity rules. I think those are VERY cool, and believe bringing them back would open up an entirely new and fun design challenge for teams. :)

Then again... since 2004 the games have all been "one task wonders" so the options for modularity are less exciting. :rolleyes:

Re: Changes over the years?
 

1 task plus bonus. Typically the bonus or end game has been reasonably unique or at least opposing towards the easiest scoring design.

At least we didn't have to tow trailers up an "Ice" or "moon" ramp this year....

Re: Changes over the years?
 

The best story is one told by Brian Beatty (field coach for 71 and probably the field coach who has won more matches than any other in FRC history).

This happened at the 2nd regional team 71 attended that year, and we all (well, most of us) knew that Team Hammond was THE team to beat in 2001.

Brian and his drive team show up late to an alliance meeting in 2001. One mentor on another team says "to keep things fair, we are drawing straws regarding who will tell the others what do do on this alliance". Anyone in their right mind would simply listen to Brian and do what he would want to do... but this other mentor wanted 1 person on each alliance to draw a straw to determine who was in charge of the match. The person with the short straw was going to be that person. Brian listened to this explanation, shrugged, and followed the plan.

So... each team drew a straw. The "Straw guy", Brian, and one coach on each of the two other teams all drew one straw. The person who drew the shortest straw was a student coach on one of the other two teams. The "straw guy" points to the person, and says "OK, you are in charge... what do we do?".

The student coach points to Brian and says "Listen to him."


Andy B.

Re: Changes over the years?
 

Anyone feel like the GDC is being...don't know how else to put it...."easier" on teams with these games compared to multitasking games from previous years?

I actually really like games like 99 and 00. 99 I just watched some vids and 00 I was there.

Re: Changes over the years?
 

I feel that the game designs have progressed and matured, not become easier. I feel that a major turning point was in 2006 with the idea of a game design that allowed for "n00bs" and vets to participate in the same game on a thematically similar scale. This happened a little in 2003 with da bins and again in 2005 with the tetras (but not really as the game was mostly played on top as tic-tac-toe).

The games seems to be the same for all with just a slightly higher difficulty for veterain teams. Not bad, just different.

My memories....

-2003's total points based elim structure, won us our only two regional trophies. None since, though that partains to other things too that we won't get into here...

-Life with PBASIC

-Rules preventing interactions with the field itself (see 2003 pic of T3)

And many more that I've forgotten about...

Re: Changes over the years?
 

Well, not every team has the ability to make a super amazing robot that can do everything in the game; that's why there are alliances. Personally, I like the fact that there isn't a huge learning curve for those teams who are poor or recently registered; it keeps things fairer, making the competitions more fun to all teams.

Re: Changes over the years?
 

I think it has indeed gotten easier to create a robot to meet the game challenge, but yet, there are so many teams that dont. Yes, I am contradicting myself.

In 2007, I thought creating a basic lift arm that could put LIGHTweight ringers on the rack would be a simple robot to build or just a ramp bot. Yet there were so many teams at various regionals that could only play "defense."
The same could be said for 2008 and 2009 where teams could not do the main offensive task.
The games prior, in the earlier years had much harder tasks or multi-tasks to do, yet so much more teams could do them. Why?

I think teams that have started in the earlier years have done so for a reason. Because they had the resources and partnerships, when FIRST was looking for more teams, they were the ones that volunteered to participate in their respective states, area or region.

A good example is in Hawaii. 359 and 368 started because when the Poofs brought their robot to Hawaii, the DOE was looking for schools interested in participating. So what did they do? They looked for teams that were already participating in the Electric Vehicle program and other hands-on programs, and in the end, found two of the top teams in EV, Waialua and McKinley HS. It was natural for us to meet the challenge of building robots, because we were already building human-driven electric cars.

As more teams are being recruited now within our own respective areas, it gets harder and harder, and more mentorship is needed to help them be successful (speaking generally). I think this is a safe, consevative assumption to make.

In summary, I think the game needs to continue being one tasked or simplified to some degree with respect to design, in order to allow more teams to be competitive in this alliance based competition.

My .02.

Re: Changes over the years?
 

I think,

Although Im sure this has been said before....
We(First community) need to focus more on creating sustainable teams instead of just "new teams"

Although, this year I saw lots of Rookie teams and 2nd year teams with great robots(the opposite from what I saw last year)

Re: Changes over the years?
 

Yes, that is why there are alliances. Back when there were multitasking games, your alliance could be so diverse like in 2001 or even as recent as 2007. A learning curve is only introduced to new teams...which I honestly don't think should be our priority. Veteran teams who are sustained need to learn to grow and develop by now. If they don't then I'd hate to say it but they just need to step up. (This isn't meant to look down on so called "poor" teams, any team that can afford 6K is not "poor") Feel free to PM me if you feel the need to refute this as it is a tangent from the original topic.