Quote:
Originally Posted by Bongle
But the problem is that there's also a large subset of teams that will use that additional time to become EVEN MORE competitive at competition. Mid-tier teams will hit the performance previously reserved for elite teams, while elite teams will hit new highs. Teams that previously would have fielded unreliable boxes on wheels will field reliable boxes on wheels with unreliable game pieces ... and still come dead last, provoking CD conversations about "oh, they just need more time".
The problem here is this:
[2 week build] A team that fields an nonmoving robot among a field of barely-working robots will be uninspired
[6 week build] A team that fields a moving robot among a field of mostly-working robots will be uninspired
[4 month build] A team that fields a pretty decent robot among a field of 2013-einstein-level robots will be uninspired.
Teams that field relatively bad robots will not be happy. No matter the build length, someone will have a zero-and-N record, and those people will leave unhappy.
So we know this:
-Low-performing teams will probably remain low-performing and still come away thinking the top 2/3s of teams are cheating/adult-built/insane.
-Mid-tier teams will probably kill their mentors and students chasing their dreams of being elite for 4 months instead of 6 weeks.
-Elite teams will either kill their mentors and students, or will have the luxury of working a bit less intensely thanks to excellent ingenuity or sponsor support.
|
Those assumptions just aren't true. There don't have to be teams that have a zero and N record. Also the winless record isn't really the problem it's the perception that they spent a large part of their lives on something that wasn't even able to play the game at all because they were fixing frame perimeter issues or were overweight or they just didn't know what they were doing. I know of a very good team that winless recently because of problems and a very rough schedule. They are still very proud of their accomplishments because they were still playing the same game as everyone else. The problem is with the teams that don't get it and aren't playing the same game.
I'm pretty sure there is a limit to how much adding more time does for the already good teams. For example if you gave teams 6 years to build an FRC robot I don't think they would be that much better than many of the robots we saw this year.
The option of spending a huge amount of time trying to win is already there. I probably spent more time in my shop than nearly anyone in FRC (about 11 hours a day for almost all of build season and a large part of competition season, however very little of my time was spent working on the robot). How does giving mid-tier teams less work (not having to build a practice bot) make their jobs harder?
Assuming that low performing teams will remain low performing is just awful. Most of those teams just don't know better and giving more time for veterans to help them will open their eyes to what they are capable of.
Also, what qualifies a team as Einstein level? I think this year out of all them shows just what can be done by raising the level of competition. How many of the Einstein teams this year were traditional powerhouses? (I think only 2 had won it all before and for most of them it was their first trip.) Powerhouse teams didn't get that way by some sort of magic or right, they worked hard just like all the teams that were on Einstein this year. What I'm trying to say is that a pretty decent robot has a shot at winning against Einstein calabar robots, the gap isn't that big. However the gap from really bad to descent is pretty large and very noticeable to people watching our events.