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Re: ARENA Fault
1. Everyone deals with field faults at times. Dean and Woody like to point out that this isn't a "fair" game. You're playing against better funded, better engineered, better mentored teams and there isn't much you can do about it. It sucks, but it's part of the game. I know it sounds glib, but these are facts we end up having to deal with.
2. FIRST does the best they can. They have some top notch folks working on these issues. We were lucky - we got to work with some of them during beta. Their turn-around time on issues that are found is spectacular - in many instances they are issuing fixes in as little as a day. But in the end they are a limited resource working with limited time and limited money. The result is an imperfect product. (See Toyota's accelerator pedals for how that works).
3. A great majority of the issues that are occuring /right now/ on the field are being caused by the teams. In nearly every match we played during our first regional, we had to wait for one and sometimes two teams that hadn't bothered to charge their laptop, or make sure it was up and running before the match. None had paid any attention to the multiple warnings during the prior week. Shame on them.
I know - none of these will make you feel any better. We've been in your shoes: last year our driverstation fried (static) in the elims during a week 1 regional and they gave us absolutely no special dispensation to fix it. We spent multiple elim matches with a dead / half dead robot. It wasn't our fault. It stunk. In the end we cursed those little blue bricks, the regolith, and the officials (who were simply following the rules) before moving on and getting over it.
First will do the best they can, and so will we. The only thing I can say is to try to stay gracious and professional, and teach your kids on your team how to do the same in the face of an unfair result. Continue to try to get into the beta tests, present papers at nationals, and help local teams to improve the end product so that we can all have fewer issues.
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