The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

I don't think removing the build window alters reality that much. It gives teams with less resources the choice to build longer like many teams already do with practice robots. It give people more choices. There are competitive teams without practice robots now but its harder. There are also competitive teams that don't meet insane hours and take 2-3 days off each week.

The biggest point I'm going to keep restating is that removing the build window will allow a lot more time to help teams get better. More pre-event practice sessions, pre-event inspections and time to get help with problems. A huge subset of teams just plain need more time to work on their robot before it can be something that runs well at competition.

But the problem is that there's also a large subset of teams that will use that additional time to become EVEN MORE competitive at competition. Mid-tier teams will hit the performance previously reserved for elite teams, while elite teams will hit new highs. Teams that previously would have fielded unreliable boxes on wheels will field reliable boxes on wheels with unreliable game pieces ... and still come dead last, provoking CD conversations about "oh, they just need more time".

The problem here is this:
[2 week build] A team that fields an nonmoving robot among a field of barely-working robots will be uninspired
[6 week build] A team that fields a moving robot among a field of mostly-working robots will be uninspired
[4 month build] A team that fields a pretty decent robot among a field of 2013-einstein-level robots will be uninspired.

Teams that field relatively bad robots will not be happy. No matter the build length, someone will have a zero-and-N record, and those people will leave unhappy. What we currently build would look amazing to a bizarro FIRST that has a 3-week build season, but yet there are still unhappy teams. Similarly, what a 4-month-FIRST would build would look alien to us in terms of quality, but there'd still be teams that were unsuccessful. And burned out mentors.

So we know this:
-Low-performing teams will probably remain low-performing and still come away thinking the top 2/3s of teams are cheating/adult-built/insane.
-Mid-tier teams will probably kill their mentors and students chasing their dreams of being elite for 4 months instead of 6 weeks.
-Elite teams will either kill their mentors and students, or will have the luxury of working a bit less intensely thanks to excellent ingenuity or sponsor support.