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Free fire zones
Following up on the practice field comments - I wish there were more "free fire zones" in the pits. We tried to recalibrate our shooter at the beginning of every day (our shot was dialled in pretty carefully: From against the low goal to "one robot distance" back from the low goal). Unfortunately the only place you could launch a ball and then adjust the robot was on the one practice half-field shared between two divisions (200 teams). There was a constant 1 hour wait for 10 minutes of access to this field. Many of our matches didn't have 1 hour between them, and it took us more like 15 minutes for a proper calibration. Moreover the field closed 1-2 hours before the pits at night, which made very little sense to me. In short, we never did get the shot perfectly calibrated (although it was close enough for all but one of our matches).
I loved what they did in NYC: They roped off a ~ 30 x 30 ft wide "unsupervised operating area" next to the practice field. Teams formed four parallel lines and operated their bots as needed (running auto, practicing shots against the wall). Everyone was gracious enough not to hog a lane, and I never saw a line up longer than 10 minutes, despite there being 100 bots in the regional. Even if FIRST was uncomfortable about a free-fire zone, it would be nice to have practice half-fields with more than two lanes when you're serving hundreds of teams.
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