Okay, time for some of the negative.
Kit of Parts - FIRST, please give us push-to-connect pneumatic fittings in next year's Kit of Parts again. Seriously, since you didn't give us any this year our team is almost out. If money is an option, have a points system where before Kickoff we can "bid" on what we want in the KoP. Obviously some teams always use some parts while other teams never use them.
Dumb Rules - Every year FIRST creates a rule that every post-season event eliminates or changes in some way due to pretty much nearly unanimous disapproval of the rule. Last year it was G22. This year it was G14. Can we just avoid this all next year and just not have any such rules?
Actually, after being a referee at the VRC competition a few weeks ago, their game rules were all of two pages long. That's it. There was no "we-secretly-want-you-to-build-this-exact-kind-of-robot-rules" that many in this program really dislike. (And there is no denying this was the intent of many of the rules this year, given the limited bumper configurations, mandatory unmodified Rover wheels, trailer attachment, extreme robot size restrictions, etc). Let teams be creative, by
please making less rules. I want to see robots that make me say "Wow!" again, as those were the robots that hooked me in this program. Sadly, they are an extremely endangered species nowadays with "stop-lawyering-the-rules!" people striking down all creative out of the box thinking, and I'm worried that students in the program now won't be as amazed and inspired by the winning robots of today as the students of yesterday were.
Why are the rules so complex? It seems there are too many chefs in the kitchen. Perhaps it should be time to ignore some of the lesser chefs, and concentrate on satisfying the majority of the goals from the most important of the chefs. It's sad, but I don't think we'll ever see a game as awesome as 2004 FIRST Frenzy ever again because of the number of chefs.
This is only a partial negative.
Districts - From apparent results, they seem to work well in Michigan, and for that I wish them the best of luck. But from my years of experience in FIRST, I've noticed that the attitudes of people within the FIRST community vary region-by-region, and I'm not convinced the district model can properly scale out to the rest of the country/world. In addition, the way points were assigned at the districts seems very biased towards the robot performance and not enough towards the core values of FIRST. The other problem I have with the districts as it currently stands is that it "secularizes" FIRST. By not letting teams from outside the "district" (in this case Michigan) participate in the competition, it cuts down on the diversity of teams one can play against. Now if there was a provision to allow something like 20 teams from outside to compete in each week of competition, this would allow teams the chance to spread out more and compete against a broader base of teams, because as it stands now non-winning teams are screwed if they wish to play against a greater diversity of teams, and it can be disheartening to play against the same dozen teams over and over and constantly keep losing (although winning against the same dozen teams can be as equally boring).
However, there are some aspects of the districts that I believe are good, such as bagging the robot. You know what? Even without district competitions, I would love to have $1000 or even $500 shaved off regional registration just if we agreed to transport the robot there ourselves without the need for a shipping crate. Shipping a 400 pound crate across the state, only to have it return to a warehouse a town over for several weeks, then again get shipped across the state for the Regional seems wasteful.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BurtGummer
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Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book, and other students assigned the task did not complete it. But with that aside, why does it matter what color a wire is? Gauge is of course understandable, but the color? ...
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I hate to harp on the same post as everyone else, but nearly all respect for this post was lost when I read the quoted sentences above.
The issue here is not about the wire color (which obviously does matter, but I'll leave that aside for now), it's about that you admitted you had not read the rule book before the competition. Then you come out and complain about the wiring color? As a tip for future years, take the time on Kickoff Day and fully read through the sections of the manual on The Game, The Robot, and The Arena. Read every rule as if you've never read it before. Don't ever assume anything.
Smokey the Fisher Price motor says only YOU can prevent rule infractions.