Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Wright
I think the idea of a "pre-inspection" the Saturday before "ship date" is a nice one, but as some have noted, this could be a problem for some teams due to logistics. But, here is the question: what happens if teams "fail" this pre-inspection? Do they get kicked out of their upcoming competition? Or is it more of just an informative inspection?
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Just a quick reminder: This is a proposal at this point, I am gathering feedback. No decisions have been made on any of this, nor are they mine to make. That will be up to Bill Miller and gang.
This pre-ship inspection could be mandatory. Your pre-ship inspection is informative only. You can't fail it, but you have to have one. We are making an effort to provide teams with better timed feedback on what might be an issue on their robot so they can use the final couple of days to fix things that they might otherwise miss until Thursday. You still must pass the Thursday inspection. The pre-ship inspection is intended to help teams not get surprised at the contest.
As an aside, we always have a number of veteran teams who don't pass inspection on Thursday. This isn't just a rookie issue. Far from it. We have had several sub 1000 team numbers in huge trouble trying to pass inspection. Usually because they missed something in the rules or Q&A
Another option is to not have mandatory inspections on or before pre-ship Saturday, and just tell teams they have from 9 AM to 4 PM on Thursday to pass inspection. Not done at 4PM? Tough luck, you will miss the first round or two. That is unfair to your alliance partners, who will really start wishing someone had done pre-ship inspections!
The bottom line is to provide 10 rounds, we need to add about 4 hours (3 rounds) to the current schedule for large regionals. I am proposing adding 2 rounds of contest to Thursday evening, and 1 round to Fridays schedule.
Regardless of the time that inspections must be passed, teams are going to adapt and get the job done. The fact that you had all day on Thursday is actually fairly arbitrary. It is what teams have learned to expect, but it is only expectation. If we change the expectation, everyone will do just fine.
Kevin