Ethics of Telling a Team "No"

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Dival

I hate the fact that teams should give up showing their abilities in order to win a match.

See, I see this as more a failure/ intentional problem on the team's part than a failure of the GDC. FRC can basically be broken down half and half into strategy and execution. Executing a poor strategy/ set of design requirements perfectly (ie, prioritizing high goal shooting over drive train and intake) is as bad as executing a good strategy poorly (see teams that poorly mimicked Boom Done). Unfortunately, teams misread games and poorly execute designs relatively often (my own team is a very good example of this in 2013 and 2011). Personally, I think a better approach than blaming the game is to adjust my robot and match play to better suit the competition, even if this is a good deal of effort.

If a team is being asked not to do something, it's likely that they should be trying to either fix that something or find something better to be doing. This year, my team came to Northern Lights Regional trying to be an everything bot-- pick up, 10 point shot, truss shot, floor passes, the works. Our most successful matches came when we locked some of the mechanisms that we were trying to use effectively and focused on just inbounding or trussing. Now, going into North Star, it's quite likely that we'll still be trying to play those roles solidly and expand on our abilities from there.

I hope I didn't stray too far... it's late at night and I've been thinking about my team's robot a lot lately.