2012 Lessons Learned :The Positive

[Solidstate89]

The ability they had this year to have the score update nearly instantly and accurately during the match and then having the final score available in under 10 seconds after the match was over is a huge improvement.

I remember during our rookie year in 2005 we had some matches occur at FLR (which also might have been compounded by the fact it was the very first year that regional took place) that we didn't find out what the score was until after the proceeding match was already over with.

[rees2001]

1. I loved the game this year. It was fun and exciting. Eliminations proved that the #1 seed would not always be Champs. Lots of things for teams to do and everybody could do something. I think this game may go down as my favorite, if not a close 2nd to 2004.

2. KOP was terrific this year. Lots of choices in motors, pneumatics and other components available through FIRST Choice, gates, and vouchers.

3.Pretty well written rules. There were some serious gaps but it mostly made sense.

4. Real time scoring. It is nice to know where you stand during the match and if you won or lost as soon as the match ended.

[dag0620]

You know, if people can just let the field issues, 2012 was really a great year. Some reasons why:

Rebound Rumble was a great game. It's spectator friendly, and fantastic to play. Watching the balances was really an incredible sight. Plus games like Rebound Rumble of Breakaway are always great, cause they make my job of explaining what we do to not FIRSTers a lot easy. People always respond better to our robot plays soccer or basketball then to years when I say it hangs inner tubes or shoots these moon balls. (not slamming those games, just to the public there harder to explain).

I love the faster reveal times on final match scores. Doing everything electronic like that was a fantastic idea, and props go to whoever at HQ pushed that through.

The overall policy of having the Finals hand shake moved from after the first Finals Match to before finals begins is a very welcome one. Props to Blair Hundertmark and whoever else was involved in that change for making it happen.

[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.

[David13]

The triple balance. It was the single, most exciting thing I have seen at a FIRST event. I don't want to do the research, but I doubt many #8 alliances have won regionals before, let alone three in one season.

[techhelpbb]

The game was cool and encouraged some automation.

The Kinect was interesting, not sure I like it, but it sure was funny watching people mess with it.

The mess with communications was finally acknowledged. (A lot of the positives shown here are fixes for old issues...you can't fix what you don't acknowledge.)

[thefro526]

-Relatively Accurate Real Time Scoring. Made for some nail biting matches, especially at the CMP.

-An "easy" but important Autonomous Mode. It wasn't that hard for most teams to at least contribute something in Autonomous.

-Exciting end game. The bridges were easy to explain to someone at first glance and were huge crowd pleasers. (ALMOST made up for minibots in 2011.)

-Relaxation of many parts rules, including motors and pneumatics. Relax the bumper rules a hair or three and we're onto something good.

[MechEng83]

I really liked the fact that I could describe this game in very simple terms to a community member not associated with FIRST. "We're making robots to play basketball" while a massive simplification gets the conversation going and opens the door with something intriguing. Logomotion was difficult to make seem fun and interesting to the unitiated: "We pick up inner tubes and hang them on a wall of pegs..." Again, the end-game was easy to figure out: more robots balancing = more points.

Kudos to the GDC for making this a fun, challenging game, with broad based appeal for non-FIRSTers.

PS, I think anyone who wants to post in the negative thread should have to post here first.

[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.

[Alan Anderson]

The Championship FRC pit layout was well done. I could quibble with the placement of Pit Administration, but it wasn't a problem.

The response to the call for lots of experienced robot inspectors was fantastic. Among other things, I don't think any teams had to wait to unbag their robots due to a lack of an authorized person to "unlock" the bag.

I actually thought the bumper rules were pretty good. (It's not the manual's fault if teams miss implications like "unless you actually have at least 8 inches of frame on each side of a corner to protect, you won't be in compliance with the rule that bumpers must protect at least 8 inches of frame on each side of a corner.")

The black volunteer shirts were a good choice. They didn't show the accumulated grime of several days of working around robots. (They also didn't show perspiration.)

Retroreflective vision targets and camera ring lights are a very good combination.

[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.