2012 Lessons Learned :The Positive

[Nick Lawrence]

The co-opertition bridge, and it's effect on the rankings.

It allowed for some of the greatest matches (possibly ever,) to occur this year.

1114 vs 2056 at GTR West is a prime example of that.

It allowed 488 to seed #1 at Alamo, an event that 148, 118 or 1477 was expected to seed #1st.

But most importantly, it allowed for some great stories and great experiences for students and mentors alike to happen.

-Nick

[Astrokid248]

At the risk of sounding repetitive, this year's game was incredible. Easy to follow, fun, high scoring, and required robots to be good at all aspects of gameplay. The co-op bridge also added a meta-strategic aspect, which made alliance selections much more exciting, in my opinion.

[Carol]

I challenge everyone to make The Positive thread longer than The Negative thread.

[Mr V]

The coopertition bridge, at least assuming the intent was to mix up the rankings giving the non-power house teams the ability to rank higher and possibly end up in a picking instead of pickee position.

Simplified penalty/foul rules and imediate scoring adjustments based upon those fouls.

[Tetraman]

Originally Posted by Carol

I challenge everyone to make The Positive thread longer than The Negative thread.

Though in name the threads are about positives and negatives, the general idea is "Things to work on" and "Things to build upon." Only natural for the 'things to work on' thread to be longer.


That said, I've got two.

1. Real-Time scoring will be key for all future FIRST games.
The ability for the drive team to calculate in their minds that they only need one robot on a bridge to secure victory rather than two can save valuable seconds (and something I did actually witness being behind a driver station and listening to drive teams) All other FIRST games from now on should see real-time scoring a priority. Having 5-second wait time for scores isn't that important, but it was really nice touch and should happen any time it can.

2. Shorter Opening Ceremonies = Good
I don't know if only the events I saw had shorter opening ceremonies, but I noticed that it was about 15-20 minutes shorter. This is a good thing. Condense opening ceremonies and keep some of the more valuable speeches till closing ceremonies or before alliance selection. It makes for a much more evened out day.

[Chris is me]

The game was basically fantastic to play and watch, with a variety of successful strategies and plenty of opportunities for intelligent play. The scores were balanced pretty evenly between hybrid / teleop / bridges.

The autonomous mode had multiple tiers - easy (2 point dump, even 1 point was worth SOMETHING), average (top row scoring) and something a little extra (each bridge for extra points). This is a good standard to set for the future.

The end game could be completed by basically anyone who could drive, even if they couldn't push the bridge down themselves.

[Steven Donow]

I'm happy to say that I think I have more positives than negatives this year...

The game this year was amazing. Fun to watch, fun to play, fun to design. No absurd rules that ruined defensive strategies and no rules that refs called excessively (such as lane violations)

MAR: Upon finding out that NJ/Eastern PA/Delaware would be moving to the district system, I was pretty skeptical and unsure about it. I was afraid to miss the flair of traditional regionals and to just end up with dull, uneventful, lame events that felt like offseasons. Boy was I wrong. Not once did I feel that way. Everything was planned out perfectly, and it feels like FIRST gave MAR some nice leeway towards doing things on their own (Ed Petrillo gave a great analogy at Rutgers, comparing it to a 17 year old being handed a driver's license and keys to a car...that one was personal for me ). I can't wait for next season; I'm sure the few flaws of MAR will be fixed and it'll get better and better every year. And of course, how can you NOT love a water jug in the pits?

The actual format of the manual: The new, online manual was nice to have. It felt a whole lot easier to search through than in past years. It's easier to just click around than having to CTRL+F through a huge PDF document. Sure, the content had its flaws, but the format of it was great.

Instant scoring and instant penalties: No more thinking, "well, the score shows we won, but I'm not sure if there were any penalties". And I was skeptical about the loss of the dramatic wait to find out the final score, but having the instant score was awesome and a welcome change.

KOP: Motors, motors, motors. Add that to vouchers and FIRST Choice and it was awesome.

This is all I can think of now, I'm sure I'll come up with more later. Overall, many great things were done this great season*.

Of course, Dean's List Finalist is always a healthy ego boost

[IKE]

I absolutely loved the amount of motors allowed to be used.

More Power uh uh uh uh...

I really liked learning the limits of the 120 Amp breaker. It was painful at the time, but it turns out it will in fact limit the amount that can be drawn.

[BrendanB]

I loved this years game!

Bridges were a great endgame that most teams at your event could participate and we found creative ways to get those last few teams on the bridge at our last event which really made it an endgame that you just needed a drivebase for!

Real-time scoring was great!

Relaxed in game rules was nice along with real time penalties *although I wished they told you after the match quickly what penalties were called I saw several robots who kept committing the same foul in several matches I assume they never knew they were getting called for it.

The field test videos FIRST came out with was a great asset! Even after seeing the field at kickoff I learned some more after watching the videos and I'm sure that a lot of teams valued these quick vids! Hope to see more next year!

While I thought this year was going to be a year full of clone/similar robots I really saw a wide variety of robots ours was no exception!

Our team had a great two regionals this year. Our robot never had a mechanical issue so it was very relaxed as a team and the students enjoyed themselves after a long regional.

A lot was learned this year both good and bad but I for one was extremely with how the first half of 2012 went! 3467 learned a lot and our students are eager and preparing for 2013!!!

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Nick Lawrence

It allowed 488 to seed #1 at Alamo, an event that 148, 118 or 1477 was expected to seed #1st.

Our performance at Alamo was on par with those other teams, though, so I feel that we would've seeded well in the absence of CP.

We seeded 64th in our division despite on-field scoring performance in the top 10% of the division, also as a consequence of CP. It's a double-edged sword.

[Debbie]

Originally Posted by Madison

It's a two-sided sword.

Agreed! Teams not showing up to balance significantly hurt our ranking as well.

[Thad House]

Dont overthink the game. At the beginning we were trying to program full autoalign and shoot with the camera, and once we got to st louis we had removed all camera tracking code and were doing manual alignment for everything including auton. It worked so much better for us. Also realizing other special ways for auton was very helpful. In the very front position our auton was deadly accurate, and we were fed balls by another teammate, and this worked very well.

[omalleyj]

The number one thing I liked was: the bridge method of coopertition made coopertition virtually mandatory without rules to mandate it.
Teams figured out early on that you had better be discussing coopertition strategies in queue or earlier.
There was a slight negative side-effect of sometimes arguing with your own alliance as to who 'got to' cooperate.
Interestingly to me, was the fact that, in quite a few matches, teams cooperated instead of winning. (i.e. the match was within 10 points and their own bridge was empty) Largely because (IMO) it became a big negative to promise to cooperate and fail to follow through.
I am interested to see if FIRST can come up with something so effective next season. And how the teams will adjust to it.

[Hjelstrom]

+1 on the retroreflective tape + LED rings. Even though this year we blazed a different trail by using Kinect, I was really impressed by the quality of image masking that teams were getting in their vision systems this year.

[topgun]

No backorder on the game balls.

No FTC parts mandated.

Variety of robots and drivetrains. Game design and rules allowed a great variety of winning designs.

FIRST released videos showing specific aspects of the field (e.g. the bridge video showing the use of two batteries to achieve the correct force needed).

More options for gearboxes for the 5xx and 7xx motors.