So, here are some thoughts I've gathered about yesterday and today at the event. I have a feeling there'll be a negative slant to this, but realize that it's not because I don't understand why it happens or that I don't appreciate everyone working to make these events possible. I'm just sayin' that the rest of y'all need to be prepared for these issues as you compete in upcoming weeks.
- There was no systematic verification of balls' exit velocity during inspection.
- Some inspectors are going to misinterpret or incorrectly interpret rules regarding the shielding of shooting mechanisms. In particular, I'm aware of at least one case wherein a team was asked to shield roller chain that was in application unrelated to their shooter. Another team is competing with too many of a single motor-type, though I don't believe the mechanism they're attached to has ever been used. I understand safety is paramount, but exposed roller chain has not in the history of FIRST been questioned for safety, generally speaking.
- Your practice matches are not a time to "practice" defense. Practice driving or collecting or dumping or shooting, but for the love of all that is holy, please don't drive your robot into machines that are being tuned, tested, and fixed. Thanks.
- The real-time scoring system doesn't work. They're relying on referees to act as a redundant scoring system. Referees don't work.
It has, on different occasions, lost a match score, crashed, and miscounted balls going into goals. I've been told, but don't have evidence, that scores have been swapped between alliances and that they have overlooked things like giving points to robots on the ramps. - It appears as if the referees have been scoring offsides penalties incorrectly, unless the procedure has changed and I'm unaware. Rather than assessing a 5 point penalty for every 5 seconds of offsides violation, an alliance has been penalized just once per round or match. This became a concern to us when we lost a match because the alliance we competed against was offsides for the length of an entire round and was only penalized 5 points. We lost. After appealing to the referees; even showing them the rules that state the correct procedure for assessing penalties, they refused to change the outcome. That kinda sucks for a whole mess of reasons that are best left to another thread.
- Own up to your accuracy. Shooting is hard, if not practically impossible, in most cases. The Cheesy Poofs are getting better with every passing moment and will be a scary thing to see tomorrow, I'm sure. Other teams are getting better as well, but not in near the same capacity. The Poofs are scary. Anyway, if you can only shoot in a temperature controlled vacuum, please admit to it.
- Any robot that can store and dump 15+ balls in its hopper will instantly negate any middle-of-the-road shooter and they'll do it faster, more reliably, and more often.
- Please read the rules. The backbot isn't a cool name I made up because I like strategy, it's a requirement and you can't cross the midfield line when you're bored. (Yes, this happened.)
- Bring spare parts if you've got 'em, big metal hammers if you don't. Our poor robot has taken a beating, physically.
- Make sure your PVC pipe is regulation. We'd pressed a plastic piece into ours to make a floor and we had to fit it with the specified endcap before we could pass inspection. We put the endcap over our spacer.
I think that's it for now. If I think of more, I'll write more. There are good things, too, of course, but that's all stuff that's related to our machine and our experience and that probably doesn't matter to any of you. We're having a good time, we've got a fantastic machine that is reliably responsible for a large (80%+) part of our alliance score each match and we're in good shape despite being placed up against some of the best machines at the event.
(We won a match despite missing one of our three alliance partner robots. 1425 ran fantastic defense while all three alliance human players loaded our hopper with upward of 25 balls which we then dumped in one giant load. It rocked.)