2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Jared Russell]

* Scoring was atrocious (real time scoring was a failure, and the system for manual counting was ad hoc and error prone particularly at early events). At every one of our events other than Championships, we have evidence that at least one of our matches was not correctly scored. But this is the ONLY bone to pick with this otherwise great game.

* The diminished frame perimeter, 54", and 84" restrictions (and their reinterpretation halfway through build season) were the most frustrating rules to deal with. Even more so because in practice the 54" and 84" limits were nearly impossible to enforce. A little more leeway in these departments would have let many more teams climb successfully.

* 8 matches at a Championship is unacceptable. We need fewer teams, faster cycle times (working scoring system would have helped here), and/or better time management. Why not intersperse divisional awards with playoff matches? Why the enormous time gap between divisions wrapping up, and Einstein beginning?

* I know it is contentious, but as invitations to Championships get harder to come by, we need to start making hard choices about who gets in. There were many Championship robots that simply were not Championship caliber, and this combined with the 8 matches-per-team format meant that an unlucky alliance pairing could wreck an elite team's chance of seeding where they should.

* Another contentious one (considering many of the posters on Chief Delphi fall in this group): "Special Invited Guest" and "Media Passes" are handed out like candy to team mentors who know the right people. When I see a half dozen mentors from the same team scouting matches from the floor right beside the field, I just roll my eyes.

* FIRST needs to get Einstein to end on time. That means reducing the gap between Divisions and Einstein, or being more selective about the number/length of corporate backslapping speeches, or doing a better job of spacing them out, or simply altering the schedule so Einstein is designed to end later so teams can plan accordingly.

* As much as I love the functionality and weight of plastic air tanks, there were several cases of these tanks exploding due to over tightening threads or spilling solvents on the tanks. Of course well-mentored teams will treat the tanks as they should and will not have problems, but giving a bunch of under-mentored high school students access to these tanks is a disaster waiting to happen. We either need to outlaw the tanks, or come up with some sort of legal "sleeve" to at least contain the shrapnel if something goes wrong.

* Practice field policy at Champs worked fine after Thursday, but on practice day lots of teams just needed to plop their bot down in front of a goal to dial in their shooters, and the line for this was insane on the Newton practice field. The two additional fields in the annex were absolutely necessary, and it would have been great to have even more (especially some with enough carpet to practice midfield autonomous modes). Also, on Friday morning our full practice field started to turn you away if you weren't 10 minutes early to your scheduled time, which was not well announced prior to the change. By Saturday morning it was better communicated that this was the policy.

* Refs had to make a lot of judgement calls (ex. what is a 3 point foul vs. what is a 20 point foul for contact with a protected FCS), which makes things more difficult for everyone.

* Pyramids varied in tolerance a lot from event to event, which is almost certainly an assembly issue. Need more precise instructions for field crews so that they are correctly assembled every time. A similar thing happened in 2011 with the inflation of game pieces.

* Pyramids were among the most expensive and hardest to build field elements teams have had to build.

* FIRST Choice had numerous issues this year (already beaten to death in threads months ago)

* FIRST Finale was so crowded that it was unsafe.