First, Jim, thank you very much. This offers very,
very valuable perspective on the matter that we've only really alluded to thus far. I'd look forward to any MAR/FiM exclusive data you might have. It might not be as dramatic--among other causes, they're quite competitive regions, both due to and resulting in the district model--but I'd bet it's something.
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Originally Posted by Tetraman
Open build would give too much advantage to teams with the capability to travel long distances to their events or have events nearby for attending both a week 1-3 and week 4-6.
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I would hope that in many if not most places, an open season would make FRC practice more like FLL., FTC and VEX: scrimmages aren't for "off-season". If some off-seasons moved to off-event weeks (in their area) during competition season, teams wouldn't have to travel so far or pay so much just to play on an at least semi-real field with other teams. (Semi-real given the logistics of getting a real field in competition season.) It might make easier replicablity/shippablity a constraint on the FRC GDC the way it is on the others--but heck, shouldn't it be anyway? It's certainly well past worth it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Van
One of the major reasons is that teams perpetually "bite off more than they can chew". Another is that they refuse to use items like the kit-bot chassis, or they may simply not have the technical skills necessary to build a working robot at all. These problems will happen if the season is opened-ended or if there is a time limit, unless the teams have better mentorship. [emphasis mine]
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Another culture change I find likely--perhaps naively--if the season got more open is further inter-team mentorship. If the strong teams weren't trying to cram so much into so little time, there'd be more of a chance to help others. This would be particularly potent if the powerhouses we're all trying to keep up with decided it was a good use of their time--which I suspect many would.
We helped and worked with a few teams a bit even with build, but if I look at what FLL does and the scrimmage we host, I know it could be a lot more. We couldn't add more more collaboration meetings or get more people on our pyramid in 6 weeks--but we did have one team that actually used their unbag time with us. A open season makes scheduling stuff like this much more doable. There's only so much you can do to help before the game comes out--so many of the struggles (though not in the teams we collaborated with directly) I see come from misinterpreting the game or mis-prioritizing what one's team is capable of managing.
In short, it's not just the time itself; it's the culture change it could catalyze.