[artdutra04]

Preface: I spent a large portion of the build season out of the country, so this is the least involved I have been in FRC in quite a few years.


One of the things that people here on Chief Delphi always ask for, is that FIRST should be more open and transparent with their decisions. And in regards to this, I would like to commend FIRST for this Team Update.

As outlined in the blog post, they did not anticipate the blizzard of discs thrown in the last thirty seconds; and as soon as they became aware of such occurring at Week 0 scrimmages, they quickly moved to improve the safety for everyone at an event and released a team update three days later. Their blog post very clearly laid out what they viewed as a problem and their course of actions to rectify it, and provided about as much transparency as is possible in a situation such as this.

While such a fast turnaround correction is to be commended, the timing of the update (hours before bag-n-tag deadline) likely contributed to the tsunami of pent-up, build-season stress and angst that was vented in this thread*.

Once everyone takes a few days to recuperate and regain lost sleep and look at this change from a big picture standpoint, I believe they will see that this does not drastically alter any portion of the game, and nor does it make any teams robots invalidated. IMHO, this game is probably the best game since 2004 to have all kinds of strategic checks-and-balances, which makes me very excited for the competition season.


* At this point in the season, I am sure that any change to the manual would cause outrage in the FRC community. They could release an update saying they were going to give every team free puppies and kittens, and many teams would vehemently complain this change was too late to budget dry kibbles into their budget.