Thoughts on Ri3D and BuildBlitz

[mrnoble]

Originally Posted by AquaMorph

I completely agree.

Actually, you don't. You edited my quote to make me say what I didn't say. I fully support everything that the teams did, in terms of the quality of work, the design ideas, the reveals, and even the CAD and BOM documents. I think these things only help FRC in general.

As I said in an earlier post, I know that my opinion on the inner workings of VexPro and AndyMark is limited and ill-informed. As an outside observer, and since we were asked repeatedly by the original poster what we would change, I stated that it [i]looks[i] to me like there might be a connection between the owners of a business working on a project, and the amount of time and energy they would have for their core service. I could very well be wrong about this, as several of you have pointed out.

[sanddrag]

While this may come across as somewhat arrogant, and I don't intend for it to, but if there's anything I've learned in my 12 years in FIRST, it's that if you're a good competitive team, your partners will let you down, nearly every time. Have we been the team to let others down? Of course (especially 696 in 2010), it happens, but I think more often than not, we've carried the weight of the alliance throughout my teams' histories (696 and 968). It's statistics. At a typical regional, there are perhaps 2 really good teams, 3 pretty good teams, 10-12 mediocre teams, and the rest are rather terrible.

If the 72-hour builds help any of our alliance partners in any match score more points (any points actually), work with us better, and in general just be more competent and competitive, it seems like a good thing. It's no fun to play on alliance where you are the only robot capable of scoring and for years (and even easy years like 2011), we have.

[magnets]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

While this may come across as somewhat arrogant, and I don't intend for it to, but if there's anything I've learned in my 12 years in FIRST, it's that if you're a good competitive team, your partners will let you down, nearly every time. Have we been the team to let others down? Of course (especially 696 in 2010), it happens, but I think more often than not, we've carried the weight of the alliance throughout my teams' histories (696 and 968). It's statistics. At a typical regional, there are perhaps 2 really good teams, 3 pretty good teams, 10-12 mediocre teams, and the rest are rather terrible.

If the 72-hour builds help any of our alliance partners in any match score more points (any points actually), work with us better, and in general just be more competent and competitive, it seems like a good thing. It's no fun to play on alliance where you are the only robot capable of scoring and for years (and even easy years like 2011), we have.

I agree. Lowering the ceiling is a bad thing, but there's nothing wrong with raising the floor.

[AquaMorph]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

Actually, you don't. You edited my quote to make me say what I didn't say. I fully support everything that the teams did, in terms of the quality of work, the design ideas, the reveals, and even the CAD and BOM documents. I think these things only help FRC in general.

As I said in an earlier post, I know that my opinion on the inner workings of VexPro and AndyMark is limited and ill-informed. As an outside observer, and since we were asked repeatedly by the original poster what we would change, I stated that it [i]looks[i] to me like there might be a connection between the owners of a business working on a project, and the amount of time and energy they would have for their core service. I could very well be wrong about this, as several of you have pointed out.

Oh I am sorry. I didn't link the two posts together and thought you were talking about something else.

I'd like to see it taper off from this year. I think they went a little too far, because everyone was excited by last year's result and wanted to participate.

This was very misleading because we were talking about changes to the whole building a robot in 72 hours. Everything after I agree was my opinion. I was not presenting it as yours.

I'm curious how people would feel if FIRST gave out a kit of parts that had instructions to build a fully working robot for the game. If inspiration is best achieved though having a successful robot why not do this? Maybe give it to rookie teams? Maybe this is the next progression from what people have learned from Ri3D.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by AquaMorph

I'm curious how people would feel if FIRST gave out a kit of parts that had instructions to build a fully working robot for the game. If inspiration is best achieved though having a successful robot why not do this? Maybe give it to rookie teams? Maybe this is the next progression from what people have learned from Ri3D.

That's a completely different situation, though. That would be FIRST directly influencing the way (strategically) the game is played. And there are plenty of resources (even outside of Ri3D/Build Blitz) to help rookie teams have a direction in their overall robot design; resources/fields that FIRST shouldn't do themselves (game-specific, that is).

I'll admit, last year, I was initially against/not the biggest fan of Ri3D for the very reasons you're posting/arguing. Then, I saw that last year was one of the most even-leveled fields in recent memory. And even then, teams still built "boxes on wheels". I initially credited it to the nature of Ultimate Ascent, but I think Ri3D really did have an impact. This year, with the very nature of the game (ie. the abilitites of your partners directly impact your own success), I truly think we'll see a playing field even more level than last year. Maybe you don't see it as much since you're not in districts, but sometimes, at smaller districts, there are not 24 'average' robots that can play the game. This makes for unexciting competition and a low floor of competition. I think with 6 different robots built/designed in the first 72 hours, the floor WILL be raised.

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by AquaMorph

I'm curious how people would feel if FIRST gave out a kit of parts that had instructions to build a fully working robot for the game. If inspiration is best achieved though having a successful robot why not do this? Maybe give it to rookie teams? Maybe this is the next progression from what people have learned from Ri3D.

We are essentially handed instructions to build a fully functioning robot to play a FRC game already in the kitbot, and some teams still struggle to build a box on wheels.

[cadandcookies]

With regards to the original goal of this thread, I would see Ri3D/BB improved mostly by increasing documentation and actually seeing some matches played. My dream would be that there would be enough robots close enough together to actually run a few matches.

I loved the addition of CAD files this year-- I know I learned a bit about how to structure full robot assemblies by investigating the Build Blitz CAD files.

The other improvements I could see would be improving livestreaming-- some of the mics were a bit buggy and I think there was at least one potato being used as a camera. The entire idea of livestreaming the events was really cool-- I particularly liked when, in the BuildBlitz scene, Karthik and JVN sat down and talked about designing robots during build season. It's really cool for me, as someone who doesn't see many of the "big names" in FIRST at regionals, to see some of the people I personally look up to acting like regular people.

Overall, I just can't wait to see the standards raised once again next year. Ri3D and BB really outdid themselves this year, and I hope to see future growth in these valuable resources for teams that don't have very many (and those that do).