2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Clinton Bolinger]

Originally Posted by CalTran

Like sending a trained 2337 representative to every regional? But seriously, FIRST needs to take a hint or a dozen from how 2337 runs their Michigan archives. 1 GoPro + 1 painters pole + 1 fish eye = AWESOME way for me to be a Michigan fanboy in Kansas.

Thank you for the kind words. I was able to talk with Frank at the Championship about what we have been doing with Web Casting and Archiving matches to YouTube. Frank was really open with the idea and asked for me to e-mail him information or a white paper on our setup.

We started this project almost 3 years ago in the hopes that FIRST would eventually see it and do it for all events. I feel that each year we are getting closer.

I will be sure to post the white paper on CD as well.

If anyone has any questions about it or wants more information, please feel free to contact me.

-Clinton-

[Taylor]

I think it would be awesome if RCA/DCA videos were shown on the big screens various times throughout the event. Perhaps interspersed with the sponsors' advertisements.

[josmee443]

The real time scoring system was definitely a problem during regionals. There were a few kinks in the system that left people in the stands confused about what the actual score was. Hopefully, next year the real time scoring system is improved!

[David8696]

Something simply MUST be done about the alliance selection and ranking systems in the Championship qualifying rounds. This year, my team (2485) wound up ranking 69th overall in Galileo, regardless of the fact that we ranked SIXTH in total teleop points, had the highest score of the qualifiers, and won our average game 133-106. We played with four of the bottom ten ranked teams in the tournament; in our average match, the ranking of our partners was 55.31 and that of our opponents was 46.33. Every single game that we played with alliance partners who, collectively, finished above .500 we won, and handily–our average win was by 94 points. Every game we played with alliance partners who were below .500, we lost, but not by much–our average LOSS was by 25 points, with two games decided by a disk and one decided by a climb. And in the game we lost by 8 points, one of our partners slipped off the pyramid a second after the buzzer rang.

I probably sound like a whiny little kid throughout all of this, but let me just say that we enjoyed every second of our first trip to nationals, and hope to return for many years to come. We just couldn't help but feel almost cheated by pure bad luck as we watched a robot that we felt was heavily underranked go without being picked for elimination.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by David8696

I probably sound like a whiny little kid throughout all of this, but let me just say that we enjoyed every second of our first trip to nationals, and hope to return for many years to come. We just couldn't help but feel almost cheated by pure bad luck as we watched a robot that we felt was heavily underranked go without being picked for elimination.

Please read the first line of my signature.

[David8696]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Please read the first line of my signature.

My apologies. To be fair, I did use the term Championships the first time. It's my first year of FIRST, go easy on me

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by David8696

We just couldn't help but feel almost cheated by pure bad luck as we watched a robot that we felt was heavily underranked go without being picked for elimination.

There are always many good robots at champs that go unpicked. This year especially I saw many amazing shooters go unpicked.

With that said, I'm surprised you guys didn't make it into elims. You simply must not have fit into an alliance's strategy.

[indubitably]

Originally Posted by David8696

We just couldn't help but feel almost cheated by pure bad luck as we watched a robot that we felt was heavily underranked go without being picked for elimination.

I definitely understand how annoying it can be when when the luck of qualifications really holds you back but the alliance captains did do their scouting and most likely didn't even take seeding into consideration. If anything, it was more unlucky that your team ended up in the division with the most FCS's, your team also wasn't given a chance to demonstrate how they might handle tall defensive bots, while others were. And don't forget that a lot of good teams don't make it into eliminations, generally because of strategic compatibility.

[Peyton Yeung]

1. Need more qualification matches at Champs.
2. Better realtime scoring.
3. Some regionals didn't have a visible screen for both alliances.
4. Climbing past 10 points were undervalued.

[JohnFogarty]

Why don't they set the fields up like they did in Atlanta. Please someone give me the reason. I thought the domes had the relatively the same size floors.

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by John_1102

Why don't they set the fields up like they did in Atlanta. Please someone give me the reason. I thought the domes had the relatively the same size floors.

See my last post.

[efoote868]

The Championship event needs more matches per team. Suggestion:
Increase the size of the playing field or cut the frame perimeters of robots and have alliances of 4v4 or 2v2v2v2, and you can keep the 100 team divisions or even increase it to about 120 while still fitting 9-10 matches per robot for the same amount of time.

The matches need less turnaround time. Suggestion:
I'd recommend decreasing the amount of playing pieces on the field but have them never leave play or enter back into play after being scored. This will keep for shorter amounts of turnaround time and allow for high amounts of scoring.

The field needs mobility. This year was good.
Keep the option to have the playing field wide open. Bridges last year were fine, but the rack from 2007 was way too big. This year was fine since teams had the tradeoff of being big and unable to be blocked or small with a wide open field.

[Basel A]

This is not a new problem; in fact, it's been around for as long as I've been in FRC: The rankings at the Championship were sub-optimal. I don't think anyone approves of 5-way ties for 1st place (Galileo) or 7-way ties for 2nd (Arch, New). Rankings could be improved in two obvious ways: fewer teams and more matches per team. Having fewer teams addresses both of those two ways. I would not complain about 60 team divisions, let alone 80.

Webcast quality. Frankly, it's pathetic. There's a few places where the webcast quality is great (Canada, for example), but far too many where the webcasts are unwatchable. It's time to standardize the webcasts by including webcasting equipment with the fields and assigning an official volunteer to maintaining it.

If you feel obligated to qualify XXX teams to the Championship, qualify more of them via wild card and less of them via waitlist. Eliminate the bias in the system against early-season regionals. I kinda understand why you don't want to qualify a team based on a Chairman's team's slot, but even the current solution doesn't solve that problem entirely. Winner-then-CA doesn't open a slot, but CA-then-Winner does open a slot. If the goal is bringing more competitive teams to the Championship, then this year was good. But next year, bring even more more competitive teams.

Game pieces should not overflow the goals. This did not happen often, but it did happen and it shouldn't. Make the goals much larger than you think they need to be. Shots bouncing out isn't cool either.

[JohnFogarty]

If you were to look at how clean the Atlanta floor layout looked in comparison to the St. Louis layout. One looks way more organized and professional. Guess which one.

[JohnFogarty]

No way.