Quote:
Originally Posted by scca229
*Jon above said this much better, but still leaving mine as I feel better now.*
I'm guessing that this won't be popular, but since I'm going to have to deal with this crap in weeks 5 & 6 (maybe 4), and watching several threads all whining about the same thing, I'm going to spill it.
/being rant
I'm still trying to wrap my head around what the issue really is here. This is sounding a whole lot like my 11-year-old and 7-year-old having a "discussion". Frankly it is amazing to me that it is the "adults" that are the vocal ones here, but I will assume that teams only want one public voice and not a whole slew.
As far as I am aware, that 60 sec "guideline" has been in the Game Manual since Kickoff. It was not a surprise addition 5 weeks into Build Season that should suddenly make a team have to redesign their entire robot because their setup takes 2 minutes and they CHOSE to ignore it. In my OPINION (was that plain enough?), a HUGE part of the Engineering Challenge for this game with the very relaxed on-field dimensions was this exact thing.
Did the Mentors and Engineers complaining REALLY think that it wouldn't be watched during the competition? If so, then why in the heck would you think the GDC would even put that blue box there in the unarguably slimmed down manual for this year? That blue box gives examples of things that can cause a team to be called for a G10. Section F says specifically, "prolonged assembly/disassembly of a ROBOT to transform is from its TRANSPORT CONFIGURATION," and a specified guideline for that assembly/disassembly says, "ROBOTS should be configurable in less than sixty (60) seconds." Yes, the 60 seconds was not in the white section, but it should give you pause for thought that they took the time to put it in there at all and maybe think, "Ya know, we ought to design to setup in less than 60 seconds."
THIS ISN'T HARD. If your team did not follow the guideline and just built a bot with the thought of, "They aren't going to enforce it anyway," then figure out a way now. Do the Engineers complaining completely ignore any guidelines in documentation in their particular fields like many want to do here?
Bringing up, "But we paid money to ignore the rules," also doesn't really fly since this was not a post-kickoff rule.
/end rant
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You just don't get it. Paul's post above summarizes the facts well.
Past that, there is a higher level argument.
We pay lots of money, and the goal is to give students a good experience (in my mind). Decisions that are arbitrary that lead to a lot of pain on students are bad. These should be minimized.
We pay to compete BEFORE we see the rules, it's on FIRST to minimize (ideally to zero) the amount of rules that give kids a negative experience. They've generally done a good job of this.
The unfortunate issue here is volunteers are clearly making this FAR more punitive than what FIRST intended.
A reasonable person assumes the rule means 60 seconds to configure, separate from the traditional setup time. I'd wager just about any team with a shooter auto last year took longer than 60 seconds to setup every single match.
If FIRST clarifies we must do it all in 60 seconds, we will. We reserve the right to be grumpy about an arbitrary decision that just hurts the kids however.
Oh, also. Paul won the Woodie Flowers Award at champs, and is all around a good dude. I don't think it's reasonable to label his "whining" (which wasn't whining) as that of a 7 year old.
Please read this before replying again.