Micro-District Model

[DELurker]

Originally Posted by EricH

As I recall, there's currently a "time between matches" factor in the FMS schedule generator. If that is sufficiently large enough and the event sufficiently small enough, you'll probably get a group of 6-12 teams that only plays each other (in various combinations).

The FMS generator, as I have been told, tries to schedule a team no closer than once every third match (n & n+3). The problem is that, with 6 minute turn-arounds, the district events are already really tight. You have 12-15 minutes (n+1 & n+2) to get off the field, to your pit, change the battery, change bumper colors (if necessary), repair any issues, and return to the queue to enter the field for your match.

Now, of course, you can probably set the time between matches to something longer, but who wants to sit there for 15 minutes looking at an empty field? However, if that were the case, then for 30 teams who are guaranteed 12 matches each (for ease of math), that would be 60 matches at 15 minutes per match. That would be 15 hours just for the qualifiers alone. Then the eliminations would take 80% of the teams attending and run for up to another 12 quarterfinal, 6 semifinal, and 3 final matches, which would have to be scheduled for about 4 more hours. That's 22 hours of event (including lunch, selections, awards, and rounding up). At ten minute turn-around, that comes down to 10 hours of qualifiers, 3.5 hours of eliminations, and a grand total of about 16.5 hours of events, etc.

[bardd]

From the international perspective:

My biggest problem with this concept is time. There's simply not enough time in the competition season for 4 events in international regions.
The main reason Israel's regional is so early (week 1/2) is to give the qualifying teams enough time to prepare for champs, make travel arrangements and get money.
If you have 4 events the earliest you can have the teams qualify for champs (after the regional championship) is week 4, about a month before internationals. This means the teams would have to get enough money to fly 30 people +equipment 6,000 miles away, about 200,000 NIS from what I heard, in a month. That kind of money is hard enough to get in two months, good luck trying to do that in half the time.

Another problem, which is Israel specific, is that we can't have events on weekends, both because we have religious/mixed teams (so no doing stuff on sabbath), and because it'll make finding a venue a whole lot harder if not impossible (most places are either shut down or occupied on saturdays).
That means the events would have to be on schooldays (like our regional is now), and I bet no school would let teams miss three weeks of school for something as "unimportant" as robotics.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by bardd

From the international perspective:

My biggest problem with this concept is time. There's simply not enough time in the competition season for 4 events in international regions.
The main reason Israel's regional is so early (week 1/2) is to give the qualifying teams enough time to prepare for champs, make travel arrangements and get money.
If you have 4 events the earliest you can have the teams qualify for champs (after the regional championship) is week 4, about a month before internationals. This means the teams would have to get enough money to fly 30 people +equipment 6,000 miles away, about 200,000 NIS from what I heard, in a month. That kind of money is hard enough to get in two months, good luck trying to do that in half the time.

Another problem, which is Israel specific, is that we can't have events on weekends, both because we have religious/mixed teams (so no doing stuff on sabbath), and because it'll make finding a venue a whole lot harder if not impossible (most places are either shut down or occupied on saturdays).
That means the events would have to be on schooldays (like our regional is now), and I bet no school would let teams miss three weeks of school for something as "unimportant" as robotics.

If you had 2 fields, You could actually do it in such a way as having 4 events during the first two weekends, and a Championship on the thirda week, thus buying an extra week for scheduling for the World Championship.

Another option would be for the regional to buy tickets ahead of time. Hotel arrangements and plane tickets for 10 students and 2 mentors for each of the 6 qualifying teams. Possibly an extra 4 tickets for the Chairmans team as they would also need RCA presenters. This would be accomodations for about 75 people... While this would not ecompass everyone from the team, it would be a comp team, pit crew, and a few scouts. I think this would total around 500,000 NIS or about $140,000 US dollars. While not cheap, this sort of thing should be doable....

You could also do an inverted season. Start off the season with the championship, and then do "practice" style off seasons while in season. Teams going to the championship would already be decided, but others could get more play/practice during regular season and maybe talk FIRST into a wildcard slot for the #1 points team... Do the 12 flights/hotel package for the Wildcard team.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by IKE

Another option would be for the regional to buy tickets ahead of time. Hotel arrangements and plane tickets for 10 students and 2 mentors for each of the 6 qualifying teams. Possibly an extra 4 tickets for the Chairmans team as they would also need RCA presenters. This would be accomodations for about 75 people... While this would not ecompass everyone from the team, it would be a comp team, pit crew, and a few scouts. I think this would total around 500,000 NIS or about $140,000 US dollars. While not cheap, this sort of thing should be doable....

The US doesn't allow that anymore for security, do they?