Backup Coupon Warning

[Mike Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Basel A

Well, there's the rule quoted about 3 posts up...

Well, one of these days I am going to learn how to read.

[FIMAlumni]

So the real question is what is the definition of available in the manual?

In this situation, the ALLIANCE CAPTAIN has the option to invite the highest seeded eligible Team from
the pool of available Teams to join its ALLIANCE. The Team who’s ROBOT and DRIVE TEAM replaces
another ROBOT and DRIVE TEAM on an ALLIANCE during the Playoff MATCHES is called the BACKUP
TEAM.

Are all teams that are eligible also available, or only teams with working robots?
Defining eligible as any teams that are not ineligible from:

If a Team declines the ALLIANCE Lead position or doesn’t send a student representative for ALLIANCE
selection, they are ineligible to participate in the Playoff Tournament.

and

If the Team declines, that Team is not eligible to be picked again or to be a BACKUP TEAM

I can't find anything in the manual about a team being allowed to decline an invitation to be brought in as a backup.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by FIMAlumni

I can't find anything in the manual about a team being allowed to decline an invitation to be brought in as a backup.

I think the choice of the word "invite" implies that there is an option not to accept. Otherwise, I would have expected the word used to be "draft".

[ATannahill]

I can give my experience from Arizona North this weekend since I was the person that checked what teams were available.

After an alliance choose to use their back-up coupon they got the highest ranked team not in the playoffs. We heard that the next team had already packed up so I took down the 2nd-6th remaining team numbers, of these five, only number 4 was able to be found. This was in the semifinals.

Originally Posted by DrWaSaBi

So my take away from all of this is. Don't be too quick to pack up and leave if you still have an operational robot?

-R3

This is what everyone should take away from this thread. Make sure a volunteer can find your team.

[Lij2015]

This may have already been mentioned but FMS only has one slot for backups on Elims, so once that backup has been saved that's it. No other robots can be called cause you literally don't have a place to type them in.

[Tristan Lall]

There's a similar discussion, including a GDC member's account¹ of the old inoperability criterion here. (It's not specifically referring to the backup robot, but rather the robot being replaced.)

¹ The opinions of GDC members are not official rulings, and thus only serve as background information for the officials ultimately responsible for making calls.

[Gutherie88]

Originally Posted by Lij2015

This may have already been mentioned but FMS only has one slot for backups on Elims, so once that backup has been saved that's it. No other robots can be called cause you literally don't have a place to type them in.

This was one thing mentioned to us by the head referee. The system should change and allow you to swap another team number in, just in case an unfortunate event like this does happen.

Say a team leaves, but a mistake is made, and the team who had left is put into the system as the backup bot? What would happen?

[Lij2015]

Originally Posted by Gutherie88

This was one thing mentioned to us by the head referee. The system should change and allow you to swap another team number in, just in case an unfortunate event like this does happen.

Say a team leaves, but a mistake is made, and the team who had left is put into the system as the backup bot? What would happen?

I think the field would see if headquarters could take control and override it but without going into the background runnings of FMS that team is technically your back up team.

The moral of the story here is that you need the field to confirm that the backup robot you wanna call in is working before they input it into FMS.

[BethMo]

Originally Posted by Gutherie88

Say a team leaves, but a mistake is made, and the team who had left is put into the system as the backup bot? What would happen?

You have a lot of smart, creative people there; they would find some hack to make it work. If the field management system can't be fixed, perhaps they could reprogram the robot to use the other team's number, and then worry about fixing up the records later?