Regional Selection Process

[JVN]

With Bill Miller unveiling the tentative regional schedule, it got me thinking about which events 148 will attend this season. That got me thinking about what exactly makes us choose the regionals we do and I began to analyze our criteria for regional selection... which of course made me wonder, what do other teams do?

How does your team select which regionals you attend? Do you have a specific set of criteria?

Some of 148's criteria:

• Dallas is our "home regional".

• We like to stay in Texas.

• We want to travel somewhere interesting.

• We don't want to travel -- we are cheap.

• We want to play with the big dogs.

• We don't like back-to-back regionals.

• We don't like week 1 regionals.

• We like week 1 regionals.

• We don't like regionals in "party locales."

I thought this was an interesting thing to think about, so I posted more info (including some justifications for our criteria) here:
http://jvengineering.blogspot.com/20...l-choices.html

[AdamHeard]

I was about to post on your blog that you should post this on chief because it was good advice... Clearly way ahead of me.

[RoboDesigners]

Originally Posted by JVN

• We don't like week 1 regionals.

• We like week 1 regionals.

Not sure if I quite understand...

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by RoboDesigners

Not sure if I quite understand...

Rationale was given in the blog. What is there to not understand? It's not like they're contradictory statements or anything. (I suspect John really means "There is an aspect by which we like week 1 regionals" as opposed to the original one, which implied an overall liking of week one regionals, contradicting the other list item you quoted [or at least its implication])

[DonRotolo]

We like week 1 regionals - it's a more level playing field, where nobody has one or more regionals under their belt.

We dislike week 1 regionals - the glitches try our patience, and sometimes we get more character-building than we prefer.

Our criteria are similar: Trenton is (was?) our "home" regional (and plenty of big dogs there), we want to go somewhere interesting, but not too far (airfares are expensive), Never-ever a back-to-back (more a schoolwork thing) and the kids need to remain relatively safe.

[RoboDesigners]

ooh... didn't read the blog first... oops

[ATannahill]

Team 79 usually goes to the Florida Regional and another regional over our spring break. This way students don't miss as much school.

[Doug G]

I for one am sick of week 1 regionals. We always felt we did better at our "home" regional if we did an away regional before hand. Since our home regional is almost always week 3, this means we do a week 1. We have done 5 years of this and each year, the week 1 regional seems to get more and more frustrating and less productive - character building as John would say. This might be a year we try some change and go for a "home" regional first and "away" second.

[Ian Curtis]

I only competed at Week 1 regionals, but I really liked them. I agree there was occasionally "character building*", but I think its much easier to build a great Week 1 bot than a great Week 5 robot. The feel I've gotten over the past 7 (eep, I'm old!) years, is that if you can reliably score the game pieces you start with in week 1, you'll be playing on Saturday afternoon. Later on in the season, as everyone gets tuned up, you really need to be able to make a 2nd and 3rd trip to the goal. (Obviously, winning isn't everything, but it is more fun to be in the hunt!)

*To be fair though, outside of 2009's static issues, I can't remember any of the other field delays.

[Taylor]

1. The school board only allows us to take township buses within the state border.
2. Charter bus is expensive.
3. We don't have loads of money
4. Boilermaker Regional is the only regional in the state.
----
5. BMR FTW!

[Mike Soukup]

Originally Posted by iCurtis

*To be fair though, outside of 2009's static issues, I can't remember any of the other field delays.

You must not have been around for the failed Hatch experiments. Those were some bad week 1 regionals. Both times.

[kstl99]

Originally Posted by Mike Soukup

You must not have been around for the failed Hatch experiments. Those were some bad week 1 regionals. Both times.

I wasn't arround and now you got me curious. What were the failed Hatch experiments? (All I can think of is Orrin Hatch but I doubt you are talking about him.)

[EricH]

Originally Posted by kstl99

I wasn't arround and now you got me curious. What were the failed Hatch experiments? (All I can think of is Orrin Hatch but I doubt you are talking about him.)

A company called Hatch got the contract to do the field software for several years. By 2006, it was obvious that something was wrong--they still couldn't do the field and scoring software right! Evidence: instead of being able to rely on the goal counters for the winner of automode, human backups were used--and it took until Championships to get a suitable delay in to allow for checking the backups. This caused at least one redo that I know about in eliminations. (I forget if they were also responsible for the Algorithm of Doom in 2007 or not.)

[Mike Soukup]

Originally Posted by kstl99

I wasn't arround and now you got me curious. What were the failed Hatch experiments? (All I can think of is Orrin Hatch but I doubt you are talking about him.)

In addition to the issues EricH brought up, at least one event in the first week of 2005 had incorrect rankings (see this thread for more info), and in 2006 matches had to be restarted when teams scored too many balls in autonomous. I still remember when we paired up with 1625 for the eliminations and we each scored all 10 of our balls in autonomous, only to have the foghorn sound. Multiple times.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Mike Soukup

You must not have been around for the failed Hatch experiments. Those were some bad week 1 regionals. Both times.

I was, but I think we got lucky at BAE and avoided most of the trouble. I remember we finished at 5PM in 2005 (Team 501 had just recieved the Chairman's award at 5:01 and the fire alarm went off), and I remember loading the truck while it was still light outside in 2006, which means we also got out by 5:30. By contrast, we left after 7:30 in 2009.

(Those were the years it was Hatch, right?)