Eliminations replay card

[JamesCH95]

To be blunt: ugh, no, this [redo card] is a bad idea.

Detractors:

-You're going to make another alliance subject their robots to another match because you screwed up, or you'll play a match with no opposition. Neither of these situations is equitable.
-It reduces the reliability required to excel in eliminations, which is one of the main points of eliminations.
-It could/will be used as a poor excuse for a failed strategy.
-It will add a considerable amount of time to each event.
-This will cause a great amount of pressure and responsibility to be put on the field staff to determine if the redo card should be allowed and/or the mechanism will be abused.
-Cheapens the whole experience. To me the whole idea feels like a little kid screaming at their friends for a redo because they weren't ready. I feel that FRC teams should be held to a higher standard than that.

I do like the idea of only counting 2/3 SF matches, although the push for reliability and consistency is clearly the dominant factor in this years game and is reflected in the eliminations setup as well as the QA-type ranking.

Related - these micro fuses have given my team no issues this year. This type of fuse gives me zero issues in my daily-driven cars and the cars that I've raced, including custom hand-made PDBs. The same can be said for millions of other cars over their life-cycles of decades. They stay in place during collision events, heavy vibrations, and a variety of accelerations. If a team is having issues with these fuses I would bet large sums of money that the fuses aren't properly seated or that the fuse socket is damaged.

I know this sounds a bit harsh, but if a team can't be bothered to check that their critical hardware is in good working order do they really deserve to be playing in eliminations? See page 13 on the user guide for the PDB: http://content.vexrobotics.com/vexpr...e-20150305.pdf where it says: "Warning: Also take care to ensure fuses are fully seated into the fuse holders. The fuses should descend at least as far as the figure below (different brand fuses have different lead lengths). It should be nearly impossible to remove the fuse with bare hands (without the use of pliers). If this is not properly done, the robot/radio may exhibit intermittent connectivity issues."

I know these last two paragraphs probably sound a bit harsh, and I am sorry if anyone is offended by them. However, I feel very strongly that individuals and teams should be proactive in avoiding mistakes and be responsible enough to do their homework to ensure that they are 'doing things right' instead of trying to find ways for FRC/FIRST to accommodate mistakes that might be made. Ask "what could I have done to avoid this mistake?" instead of "what could someone else do to mitigate this mistake?"