[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by InfernoX14

It being the day after 166's Mayhem in Merrimack, we would like to hear some feedback from those of you who went and participated and all that.

To start with, I'd like to thank the many volunteers that made the event possible! Our team (Mechanical Mayhem, #1519) had a great time at the event and will definitely be looking forward to attending again next year!

Originally Posted by InfernoX14

What did we do well?

Access to the pit areas for load-in and load-out was great. The covered walkway was especially appreciated when it was starting to rain during load-out!

The tournament volunteers at the table in the pit area did a great job with letting teams know when they needed to queue up.

It was nice having the playoff brackets posted in the pit area so that those in the pits during alliance selections could see how it went!

We loved the proximity of the stands to the playing field -- the cozy venue made it easy for everybody to watch the play on the field.

The referees and field reset volunteers did their jobs promptly and effectively.

Having a practice area was helpful for testing out robot driving and practicing shots on the high goal.

Including 5 T-shirts with each team's registration was a nice touch!

The volume of the music was appropriate -- loud enough to accompany the robots, but not so loud as to be deafening.

The 2-on-2 alliances were an interesting twist on the regular season game.

Allowing teams to bring a second robot for no extra charge was greatly appreciated! (Without that incentive, we never would have known what it was like to build a second robot in 3 days!)

We thought the game-specific trophies were cool.

The name of the tournament is one of our favorite parts -- "Mayhem in Merrimack!"

Originally Posted by InfernoX14

What can we improve on?

Setting a date for the tournament even earlier in the season and getting the word out sooner (say, announcing it at the Granite State Regional) might help encourage more teams to attend.

It always seems that there's never enough time in the morning to resolve field issues. It probably would have been wise to have had a practice match or two before the first real one to work out the bugs with score counting, etc.

It seemed that there was an issue with the two alliances being started at slightly different times -- one alliance always seemed to have about a 3 to 5 second "head start" for most of the qualifying matches. At least this was resolved well before the playoff rounds.

Would be good to have the "projection screen" for displaying round scores available from the start. (Adding the screen later in the morning was greatly appreciated!)

Thanks, team 166, for hosting a great off-season tournament!