FIRST's statement on Einstein

[Eugene Fang]

Originally Posted by Wing

With the way things are going, I have a bad feeling about any potential Einstein replay matches on IRI. There is definitely going to be a bad vibe going about if 180, 16, and 25 don't win that time, and it would just be awkward. I feel like FIRST is handling it correct for now, and needs to investigate this deeply, and as for the champions, I like the idea of keeping the current Champions, but having all other Einstein teams be given a bid to the 2013 Championship.

I agree. If I were the IRI committee, I wouldn't want to put the 2012 World Championships in an awkward position. All four alliances had the potential to win, and even with no field issues, some luck going one way or another would have produced a different world champion.

[Hawiian Cadder]

There were several team throughout the season with comm issues. I really hope FIRST finds a more robust com system. This should not have happened, especially on Einstein.

-Shout out to team 1619 who built and insane robot this year, and it connected in only 3 matches.

Originally Posted by JTN

All I am going to say is that people need to be quiet about our so called "tainted win" and look at IRI and the 2013 season.

-JTN

I don't think your win was tainted at all, though other alliances had possibly better single robots, you guys were the most extraordinary alliance with the best strategy and match play. The defensive play and ball starvation allowing great tele-op scores as well as the insane speed and reliability of your auton and balancing earned you the win.

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by JTN

All I am going to say is that people need to be quiet about our so called "tainted win" and look at IRI and the 2013 season.

-JTN

I haven't heard a single person call it a tainted win. Granted, everyone would have rather had all robots working in all matchups, but they weren't. We'll see later at IRI, but I bet this alliance would win no matter what.

[jsasaki]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

I haven't heard a single person call it a tainted win. Granted, everyone would have rather had all robots working in all matchups, but they weren't. We'll see later at IRI, but I bet this alliance would win no matter what.

sadly heres one

I know others will disagree with me (and this is no way how the team that I am affiliated with feels, this is a purely personal opinion), but I do believe it was a tainted win. I mean absolutely no disrespect to the winning alliance; they were a fantastic set of robots. However, looking at the definition of tainted: Affect with a bad or undesirable quality. The matches were quite obviously affected with an undesirable quality, comm issues.

Again, I mean no disrespect and this is only a personal opinion, not that of the team number next to my name.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

I haven't heard a single person call it a tainted win. Granted, everyone would have rather had all robots working in all matchups, but they weren't. We'll see later at IRI, but I bet this alliance would win no matter what.

I mean... let's be honest here. Several robots did not move for part or all of their matches due to, as far as we can tell, factors entirely out of their control and/or knowledge. I certainly have no ill will towards 180, 16, and 25, and understand that they're probably feeling just as bad as everyone else right now, but it wasn't a fair fight.

[Chexposito]

My disappointment in the situation is that the alliances were not able to perform to their full potential. Curie had a really intense finals, great teams on both sides, and I didn't notice connection problems. From what I heard coming from the crowd at Archimedes, that division's eliminations were also very intense.

[StAxis]

I think the thing that people need to remember is that the winning alliance had comm problems as well, they affected everyone. As someone who was really pulling for 180, I freaked out when they dropped comms in the last game till just the last couple seconds.

While I wish that the matches would have been played out with all robots moving, I still think that the way 180, 25, and 16 played together was brilliant and they deserved the win. Now as for IRI, I think that replaying would be a bad idea, there is always luck involved wether or not comms are dropped and now with time to improve the robot I think that by then it wouldn't even be the same. I think that we should just learn that this is something we need to make sure doesn't happen in the future. What's done is done, every team played their heart out and while it is terrible that some people will never know if comm issues got them out, at the end of the day circumstances still provided for the winner. They made it to the finals and they won, a rematch would just be like trying to strip them of the crown that they fought hard for and I don't think that is right. I like the idea of inviting all of those teams back to worlds next year, but the results should be left as they are regardless of the other factors that poured into it.

All that being said I hope FIRST is going to look into finding a better comm system for 2013 and onward so that disconnects are less likely to happen anywhere from einstien to practice matches.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

My question to Jon Dudas would be, "Why did it have to come to this?"

I think that is about all I can say about the situation.

Jane

The legitimacy of "communications problems are on your [robot's] end, not us" lost all of its weight when a team that won 46 of its first 47 matches suddenly stops working, didn't it...

Like in most cases, something will only be changed after it fails massively. Sorry it had to be like this, but maybe we will get the change needed.

[Bruceb]

Comm problems have plagued FRC for years and and I have always had problems understanding why FIRST seemed to always want to blame the robots. There has to be a more robust way to do this. Jeez, I fly RC airplanes and you might have 10 birds in the air at the same time and there are no comm problems.
This has been my biggest frustration after almost 10 years in FIRST. Sure hope they get it fixed. It is horribly frustrating having put so much time into a robot and have the teams hopes dashed by field problems. We had other issues this year and had no field comm issues but we have had problems in the past(2010) and lost a fair number of matches because of it. I think it taints FIRST more than any alliances victory. I am so proud to be part of something this wonderful. Fixing these comm problems can only make it that much better.
BTW A great thanks to Dean and Woody. Great men with a great dream for our future.
Bruce

[AmoryG]

Originally Posted by StAxis

I think the thing that people need to remember is that the winning alliance had comm problems as well, they affected everyone. As someone who was really pulling for 180, I freaked out when they dropped comms in the last game till just the last couple seconds.

While I wish that the matches would have been played out with all robots moving, I still think that the way 180, 25, and 16 played together was brilliant and they deserved the win. Now as for IRI, I think that replaying would be a bad idea, there is always luck involved wether or not comms are dropped and now with time to improve the robot I think that by then it wouldn't even be the same. I think that we should just learn that this is something we need to make sure doesn't happen in the future. What's done is done, every team played their heart out and while it is terrible that some people will never know if comm issues got them out, at the end of the day circumstances still provided for the winner. They made it to the finals and they won, a rematch would just be like trying to strip them of the crown that they fought hard for and I don't think that is right. I like the idea of inviting all of those teams back to worlds next year, but the results should be left as they are regardless of the other factors that poured into it.

All that being said I hope FIRST is going to look into finding a better comm system for 2013 and onward so that disconnects are less likely to happen anywhere from einstien to practice matches.

A lot of people are saying 16, 25, and 180 deserved to win anyway, but can anyone say that the other 3 alliances deserved to lose? Not at all, the winners were decided by a coin flip, and if it any of the other alliances were lucky enough, they would have won too under the circumstances. And if none of the alliances deserved to lose, did any alliance deserve to win outright? For me it was a tainted win, because no matter how I look at it I will still feel bad for the other alliances.

[Robert103]

Originally Posted by AmoryG

A lot of people are saying 16, 25, and 180 deserved to win anyway, but can anyone say that the other 3 alliances deserved to lose? Not at all, the winners were decided by a coin flip, and if it any of the other alliances were lucky enough, they would have won too under the circumstances. And if none of the alliances deserved to lose, did any alliance deserve to win outright? For me it was a tainted win, because no matter how I look at it I will still feel bad for the other alliances.

A coin flip? Really? It's not like 16, 25, and 180 didn't have their own problems. Sure, there were issues, and there are reasons to be upset, but to call their win "tainted" is actually really disrespectful. They won and they shouldn't feel bad about winning. The only thing that this is accomplishing is doing exactly that, making the winning alliance question their win. The best thing to do right now is to congratulate everyone on their performance, and make sure in the future, we don't need to have these discussions.

[AmoryG]

Originally Posted by Robert103

A coin flip? Really? It's not like 16, 25, and 180 didn't have their own problems. Sure, there were issues, and there are reasons to be upset, but to call their win "tainted" is actually really disrespectful. They won and they shouldn't feel bad about winning. The only thing that this is accomplishing is doing exactly that, making the winning alliance question their win. The best thing to do right now is to congratulate everyone on their performance, and make sure in the future, we don't need to have these discussions.

Perhaps it wasn't complete chance and the problems that occured had something to do with individual robots, but I will give alliances like archimedes the benefit of the doubt and say they really couldn't have done anything about it. If you switch a few variables I would say archimedes would have moved on, and on the other side the newton alliance might have moved on as well. It might not have been, but newton and archimedes were extremely unfortunate, and I feel bad for them. I do not feel like they should have lost at all. It was a tainted loss, and that means it was also a tainted win.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by AmoryG

Not at all, the winners were decided by a coin flip, and if it any of the other alliances were lucky enough, they would have won too under the circumstances.

There has been only one win that was actually decided by a coin flip. It was not in 2012. And it is the reason for the elimination-match tiebreakers that have shown up in 2011 and 2012, I think.

As I said before, the winners here were the teams that best dealt with the challenge that was nowhere in the rules but enforced by the conditions: maintaining communication with the field. It's a lot tougher than any other part of the competition if stuff isn't working, and should be easier than any other part if stuff is working.

[Libby K]

I've posted in another thread already, but I just wanted to repeat myself here...

As you have seen in the letter from President Jon Dudas... FIRST is going to try to figure out what happened and make a solution. I fully believe that it's important to recognize each of the Division champion teams for their efforts on Einstein in some way... and then work on resolving the connection issues for next year.

I had no bearing on what happened, but I am truly sorry it did. I'm sure FIRST will make sure this never happens again.