Mythical Six Week Build Season

[Bill Beatty]

Is it time to eliminate the “six week” build season? Think about the tremendous savings of time and money if there was no six-week deadline. A number of folks will say that six weeks is long enough and if you expand the build season you’re going to have more mentor burn out.

Actually, the majority of the leading teams build two robots and continue to develop, improve, and practice throughout the entire FIRST season. That coupled with the withholding allowance and the practice and pit time at the various regional and district competitions allows teams to legally make major changes.

You could eliminate the building of a second robot, which most of the leading teams do. You could continue to practice, debug, and improve the one robot that you take to the competitions. And you can eliminate the “bag and tag” nonsense.

If you want to keep the six week build season, then make it an actual six week limit. Make it illegal to continue to work and practice after the ship/bag date. Otherwise eliminate it completely.

Comments?

[Christopher149]

I need some break in the spring to work on my senior design project, so I want there to still be a limit.

[Lil' Lavery]

It's probably about time we had this discussion again. For reference, here are a couple previous discussions on similar topics.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=116658
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=126848
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=116789


P.S. Awesome to see Bill posting again.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Christopher149

I need some break in the spring to work on my senior design project, so I want there to still be a limit.

Simple, choose to stop working.

Just like you can choose to not work on a practice robot now.

[Jay O'Donnell]

I think you would find that teams would just look at whatever the best robots are in the first few weeks (254s and 1114s of the world) and start building a whole new robot for later events and championships.

However everything involving money and time spent would be a lot nicer.

[JVN]

I'd be 100% in favor of eliminating "bag day" and shifting to a "kickoff-to-competition" schedule. We'd do less work, be less stressed, and consume less resources while probably providing a better educational experience.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

I think you would find that teams would just look at whatever the best robots are in the first few weeks (254s and 1114s of the world) and start building a whole new robot for later events and championships.

I would love to hear the perspectives of FTC and VRC teams on this line of thought. They have an even larger competition window and much more affordable robots, making strategies like this even more feasible.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

I think you would find that teams would just look at whatever the best robots are in the first few weeks (254s and 1114s of the world) and start building a whole new robot for later events and championships.

However everything involving money and time spent would be a lot nicer.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I would love to hear the perspectives of FTC and VRC teams on this line of thought. They have an even larger competition window and much more affordable robots, making strategies like this even more feasible.

This is very common in VRC. By the time we get to VEX Worlds in April, design convergence has usually set in, with 2-3 designs that have been extensively cloned/copied. Some teams really like this, others really don't.

[AllenGregoryIV]

It did seem a little quiet around here lately.

I've made my stance clear for a long time, the six week build season negatively impacts lower resource teams to a greater degree then large resource teams to the detriment of the entire program.

If we remove the build season limitation across the board we will see a dramatic increase of the quality of the product that we put on the field in front of the public.

Teams have more time to

• Share ideas and teach during the season
• make their robots professional looking (paint, etc)
• iterate, tune, and tweak
• Practice, Practice, Practice

The only argument I see against the limit is burn out, but a large amount of teams are already essentially building right up to and through Champs (or IRI). So if a team wants to stop after the 45 days they are able to and won't be at any further disadvantaged then they are now.

[marshall]

I'm in favor of getting rid of it. I got some evil stares from mentors when I said FIRST would eventually get rid of it about 2 years ago at a meeting but I stand by that statement. It will eventually go away.

I suspect we'd see less convergence than everyone thinks but I could be wrong.

[GeeTwo]

Getting rid of the six week season will make keeping rookies (and new mentors) on the team a bit harder.

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Stop Build Day (n), also known as Bag and Tag: Another fairy tale told to help keep rookies going for a few more hours when "Offseason" seems too far away.

It would probably also make the act of packing for the first trip to competition twice as stressful as it already is, since there will be much less packing until the last minute. Also, the withholding allowance format encourages adaptability and consistency in dimensions as a requirement in the design process.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Getting rid of the six week season will make keeping rookies (and new mentors) on the team a bit harder.



It would probably also make the act of packing for the first trip to competition twice as stressful as it already is, since there will be much less packing until the last minute. Also, the withholding allowance format encourages adaptability and consistency in dimensions as a requirement in the design process.

Weird.

We're very transparent on our team that we essentially work year round, and that build season extends through the last day of champs. Doesn't seem to cause anyone to lose faith halfway through.

[Mark Sheridan]

I think more mentors are lost when they realize the time commitment is more than they expected. I think my team is better at being up front on how much time it takes to mentor. We no longer describe the commitment as only the build season but include the full length of competition.


P.S. Hey Bill is back!

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Karthik

This is very common in VRC. By the time we get to VEX Worlds in April, design convergence has usually set in, with 2-3 designs that have been extensively cloned/copied. Some teams really like this, others really don't.

We will see a slight rise in design convergence but not a whole lot more then we already do. Rebuilding an entire FRC robot is a lot of work with or without the bag restraints. Removing the bag restraints isn't going to instantly motivate teams to put in that kind of effort. We see teams rebuild in season every year (we did it, 973 did it, etc).

FRC is a different animal than VRC.

• Less time between first competition and championship
• harder to rebuild/build a robot in that time frame
• more expensive to copy a design
• much, much harder to get it right when you do copy a design
• few teams will just wait for 7 weeks to see what the top week 1 team does

We already saw design convergence with the systems that are easy to modify in many years. It didn't ruin anything.

• 2011 - Minibots
• 2015 - Can Grabbers
• 2012- Bridge Balancing devices (stingers)

[avanboekel]

One major advantage of the current build format is that it only allows 1 robot to be associated with a team. There are a few scenarios in which I can see this being taken advantage of.

1) Team A built a good robot, but didn't manage to qualify for championships. Team B qualified (maybe as a 3rd robot or RAS), but doesn't have a very good robot. Again, Team B could potentially compete with a robot that they had no part in building.

2) Team C didn't build that great of a robot this year. They are friends with Team D that built a really good robot. Team C is competing in a week that Team D is not competing in. Team C in theory could compete with Team D's robot to give them a better chance at winning the event.

3) Team E has a lot of resources. They could build 2 different robots for use with different strategies. They can bring them both to competition, and just reinspect their chosen robot each time they want to play a different position in the game.

4) Cheesecaking could get out of hand (more than it already has) with teams literally bringing a full alliance worth of robots to swap with their partners.

Are there rules that could circumvent these scenarios? Probably, but these are definitely things that would need to be addressed before we drop bag day.