Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

I'm going to respectfully disagree here. There are MANY teams that go to one event that win regionals, and that still doesn't explain how these powerhouse teams win AT THEIR FIRST regional.

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

You are correct that many more teams that win late regionals have attended a previous event.

For 2009 Week 5 Regionals (districts excluded) I counted 8/30 winners that were one event teams.

I would echo the point that correlation does not equal causation, however. Of these 22 winners that had attended previous events, I counted 21 that had been in the eliminations at their previous event. 13 had advanced to at least the semifinals. 8 had made it to the finals, with 4 of the teams winning their previous events. In a competition like this where it is all about the alliance you end up on and a little bit of luck is definitely involved, these stats tell me that these teams build good robots.

I am not going to deny that going to a second event helps show a team what works and what should be improved as well as giving the drivers valuable experience behind the sticks. What I am suggesting however is that these teams would have stood a good shot at winning these late events even if they had not gone to a previous event.

The other thing we have to take into account is that FIRST is already working on a solution to the "problem" of how to get teams more playing time. The FiM system you are participating in gets you 2 events for the price of 1. FIRST has opened up this system to any region that wants to implement it. This decision by FIRST was made late in the process of planning this year's events and their are many hurdles to implementing this system in other places, so no other regions have taken advantage of it this year, but hopefully we will see more areas shifting to this system.

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

Not to mention every team would have to find a way to safely move their robot from their home to competition. Any team that needs to fly would be in trouble and the chances of robots being damaged in route would probably greatly increase.

Honestly I think it would just make better teams better. Teams with a lot of resources will be able to change their robot much quicker to adapt to competition. I can just imagine some of the changes I've seen at IRI in week 5 because of all the free time. The best example I can come up with is 1114's autonomous in 2008. By IRI they were lapping (sometimes even a 5th line) and knocking down both balls, giving them 32-36 pts in autonomous alone.

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

Every team starts out equal. If you want to make a practice robot, go out and fundraise. If you want to go to more than one regional, go out and fundraise. Its not that hard.


Last year was our first year of two competitions. We thought that that allowed us to have significantly more fun, and make us more competitive.

This year we are doing two regionals and two identical robots.



Fund raising is your friend

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

Lets say my team and your team are each attending one regional event.

My team attends a week 1 regional. Your team attends a week 5 regional.

My team competes in week 1, finds out our design isn't the best for this year's challenge, isn't picked for the elimination matches, and does not qualify for the championship. Our "official" season is over after that one event.

Your team keeps your robot, and continues working as you watch week 1, 2, 3, and 4 regionals. Four additional weeks to build, with the added benefit of watching 4 weeks of competitions to garner strategy, find out which mechanisms work best, etc. Now you and all the week 5 teams have a chance to field far more competitive robots than anyone in week 1.

In essence, my team has a 6 or 7 week build season for one event. Your team has a 10 or 11 week build season for one event. How is that fair? Sure, my team could keep the robot after our regional and continue working through the rest of the season, but if we aren't attending any other official competitions, what purpose would that serve?

Changing the format like this would effectively make early week regional competitors do the gruntwork in designing mechanisms and establishing strategy. Any late week regional competitors could easily see what works and what doesn't, with potentially 2-3 weeks to revise and redesign their robots accordingly.

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

I did not expect to see this topic being posted by an engineer who works in the "real world."

Real world constraints and business type constraints is how I'd rather keep this competition.

Need more money? Fund raise more.

Very frankly,
Akash

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

Where is it written that FIRST tries to be fair to everyone?

Why do teams that can afford more than one regional have to become handicapped?

Why do teams that build practice robots have to become handicapped and not build them?

If you handicap those who can and do, you are also handicapping the dreams of those who want to and work to achieve/attain those goals.

Inspiration grows with/through development and struggle. Inspiration dies when handicapped and/or quelled.

Jane

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

Marc,

That is exactly the way the current system works for those of us that utilize the Withholding Allowance. The only thing this proposal changes is making the Withholding Allowance the whole robot instead of just 65 lbs. All teams competing at your Week 1 event are on a level playing field with each other and so are the teams competing at my Week 5 event. The fact that the two playing fields are not level with each other doesn't really matter does it?

I don't think I ever really addressed the initial proposal so I will do so here. I disagree with the statement that more would be learned by extending the build season (which is essentially what you are proposing). I am a strong believer in Parkinson's Law. Will team's spend more time prototyping if they have more time to build the robot? Maybe. Will this result in "better" robots? Maybe. Do "better" robots change anything? I don't think that they do.

I contend that there is an equal, if not greater, amount to be learned by working within the given time constraints.

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

Doesn't this go against one of things that makes FRC different from all the other competitions? 6(.5) weeks to design/build/program a fully functional(or as close as possible) robot that when shipped its no longer touched until the team gets to the competition. This is what makes FIRST such a great experience. When I go into companies and talk to them about what we do they are amazed at the all the technical aspects of the program. Then when I tell them that its just 6 weeks to do it their mind explodes(mine does as well).

FIRST alumni are that much more valuable 'cause they have experience working under a tight deadline. By allowing teams to keep back their robot tell competition would eliminate that all together. I know if i had the chance, all I would do is test theories up until competition started, and build my bot around what I was seeing during the real game.

Aside from if the current system is fair or not. FIRST is about delivering experiences that can't be found outside the real work place. Learning how to work with a team, on a robot, in the middle of the night before ship date is what makes FIRST FIRST.

Just my .02.

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

This is essentially the arguement right here.

If we're honest, week 5 only teams might not build more than a drive train during the true build season. Why wasste the time when you have 5 weeks to scout out what works and improve upon it?

This year on my team we kept jokingly saying saying with 40 lbs of prefab and COTS we could build a regional winner/competitive robot on Thursday at a regional because we design so many COTS parts into our robot. When they upped it to 65 lbs we went from joking to a full day of saying, "Should we just assemble a robot from COTS and our 65 lbs on Thursday?"


No let me get on my soap box...

As a member of one of the teams referenced above in the "every year" category. There are certain things that the perennially competitive teams do other than build a second robot (we use the kit bot or old robots as a test bed not a 2nd robot because we can't afford to build one).

Strategy, Scouting, Picking, Continuous Improvement, Reliability.

Ask Wildstang, Hot, Thunderchickens, Pink or any other teams that made Einstien multiple times in the last 5 years since we started the 3 team alliance era and they will tell you those 5 things I mentioned above get you there. That's how a team can gop from not being picked at their only regional to winning a Championship division (my team in 2008). Most teams don't pay attention to the details. The perenniel powerhouses on the other hand pay attention to every detail and stratagem because they get treated differently by teams that go up against them because of their reputations. It forces them to be more creative and ready for more being thrown at them.

My $0.02.
Pete

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

What's stopping any team in FIRST from going to more than one event? Building a practice robot? Nothing they can't change.

One of the things about FIRST that's different than the real world is that almost all instances of "wealth" among teams are earned every single year. While in life, there are people that don't lift a finger a day in their lives and inherit millions (Paris Hilton types), in FIRST that really isn't the case. Every team has to fundraise, and few single corporations give the $60,000 a year or so that it costs to run a team that goes to 2 events, champs, practice bot, the whole 9 yards.

What I always see is people carrying this abhorrence of the wealthy and embarrassment of riches into FIRST without really understanding why people think all of those rich snobs are disliked by them or others. It's not (shouldn't be) jealousy, but that "I'm doing all this hard work and that jerk didn't do anything to earn it" that seems to generate these sentiments. This is a concept that doesn't exist in FIRST.

Motivation aside, your suggestion isn't a bad one. It's what VRC and FTC have done for years now.

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

Let me get this right...

- Some teams work really hard to get extra funding.
- They then use that extra funding in conjunction with more hard work to build a practice robot.
- They then work tirelessly perfecting their systems and driving until their fingers bleed.

So, you're saying there's a correlation between hard work and success? Who woulda thunk it?!

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

Right! I hadn't considered the Withholding Allowance, especially the 65 pounds of this season. I'm from the olden days where once the robot shipped, all you could do is fabricate a few pounds of exact duplicate replacement/spare parts, no upgrades or additional components. More recently we had the "fix-it" windows, where teams were only allowed to work on robot related things within hours corresponding to active regionals.

I like the idea of a concrete deadline everyone must adhere to. Sure, multi-regional teams have more practice and extra hours to work on their robots. However, as has been mentioned many times already in this thread, fundraising can go a long way in making any single regional team into a double or triple regional team. Of course, that's easier said than done, but where there's a will, there's a way.

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

Part of the reason FIRST gives teams 6 weeks to work on the robot is because that is similar to how the real world works. Personally, I think a tough deadline is part of the challenge (if you can overcome this by building a second robot, then this is also a great challenge, and requires you to overcome obstacles other teams will not have to overcome).

Re: Vote to change the format of FIRST.
 

Or not.

It can also be about teams setting down a timeline and working within that timeline to get the product made. I read and hear stories of all the late night/all night frenzied build sessions in the shops. Ok. If that is how that team functions and the facility/mentors can handle the late hours - that's fine. Teams that work with shorter hours with a more time-managed plan can do that, too, and perhaps learn about those constraints in the process.

We can see in threads in CD, on a pretty regular basis, that teams will find ways to push the constraints/rules/guidelines to the max - trying to eek out whatever benefit they feel they can. Teams also complain. A lot. If teams compete in the 5th week with full access to their robot up until that time, the teams that competed before that 5th week will not sit quietly by and accept that those teams had so much more access to their robot than the earlier competitions did, I can just about guarantee that. And - I think we would see folks hitting burnout at a lot faster rate. Burnout at a higher faster rate would be very bad for FRC.

Jane