The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

[EricH]

Originally Posted by ToddF

Let me ask some questions. Would your team design and build a drive train (including bumpers) before the game rules were released, if it were legal to start building on, say, the first weekend in December? Could you be creative enough to build one which could be adapted to the game, whatever it ended up being? Would the rewards of doing so be worth the risk that it might not be perfect for the game and it might need to be modified? What rules would need to be changed for this to be legal?

I don't know. However, I do think they would seriously consider doing something like that.

Now, that said, the #1 risk is that the size changes and the team has a welded frame (or other very-hard-to-reconfigure frame). BAR NONE. Can moving stuff around be done to make it work? Sure. But for 90% of the teams that don't use the Kitbot or 80-20, and most that do, that size change will really make life miserable. I'm pretty confident that most teams would either adapt their drivetrain to the game, or play the game in a unique way.

So, let's assume that on 12/1/2013, FRC says "OK, folks, your base size for the year is a 160" frame perimeter, bumpers are between 2 and 10 inches, and you can start work NOW. The rest of the rules will be at your regularly scheduled Kickoff. Good Luck!" For the sake of example, I'll assume that the Kitbot/PDV option is applied such that the team will receive the Kitbot early in December, say as close as possible to 12/1.

If that was the situation, I think there could be massive, massive playability benefits for teams that opted to take a calculated risk. As follows:
1) Rookies could have a drivetrain, with several hours of practice, well before Kickoff, giving them time to troubleshoot potential problems beforehand (familiarity).
2) In addition, all teams opting to take the risk would be able to focus much more on object manipulation. More objects manipulated=more exciting game, which can lead to a whole trail of benefits that should be fairly obvious if you've spent more than a couple of years around FRC or CD.
3) If the only thing you have to do with the drivetrain/frame design is to tweak it, see #2. It may be much easier to tweak than to start from scratch.

However, the massive risk is that you get something like this year, where the variable robot shapes to contend with the pyramid and the loading zones wreaked havoc on many possible drivetrain/frame combinations that could have been worked out ahead of time. Or the assumed-legal motors were not legal after all.

OTOH... Using the real-life mirror, often you may have to adapt a "stock" design to fit a specific need. Under deadline. With limited budget/materials on hand. Hmmm... Sounds just about perfect for this little addition.

I like that warped thought. *wonders if Frank et al are looking at this thread and getting ideas*