What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

[Littlepchan]

I haven't been in FIRST for very long and I lack a lot of experience in the program, but I would have to say a way to improve the FIRST experience would be documenting more items.

Our first year was a huge hassle. Why? Simple, we didn't know what could be done. The concept of Flywheels was foreign, Pneumatics was an expensive mystery, Advanced Drive trains were an even bigger mystery, and knowledge that would be common to a team with 3 or more years was unknown to us.

The book "FIRST® ROBOTS: Behind the Design Book" written by Vince Wilczynski and Stephanie Slezycki is definitely a great book to start teams thinking about what they can do. The pictures included also help visualize some important concepts that are hard to explain in words. However, it glazes over the concepts and mathematics that make everything work. I can't currently quote the book, pages, or sections because I do not have it with me but this is a problem.

After going through our first year, we decided that if we had a rookie team come under our wing we would make sure they had the tools and information to do amazing things. At the same time, to make sure they were creatively thinking an innovating we didn't tell them everything just our thoughts and ideas. Team 6171 this year made it to Semifinals at the Dallas Regional and received the Rookie All-Star award to take them to Championships. Also, in their robot they had things that we could only dreamed of having in our rookie bot, probably because they had 5431 10 minutes away that could give them the information they had learned the year prior.

This is a problem when you consider teams that have been around for over 18 years. No wonder we see robots from low number teams make it to the finals and Einstien so often. They have the knowledge that no one else has and the documentation that our team has personally found has been garbage. I was able to find something about flywheel launching with great documentation, but that has been it. As such, what I would do if I had the time and the money is take everything about FIRST and document it with extreme detail. If the students do not have access to knowledge, how are they expected to learn anything?

[EricLeifermann]

If they wont get rid of bag and tag day, which is #2 on my list of ways to improve FIRST, they should give all teams 6-8 hours of unbag time the week of a competition and then have qualification matches start after lunch on Thursday.

I'd also be up for regionals moving to a Fri-Sun schedule instead of a Thurs-Sat. That would take kids and teachers out of school less, mentors don't have to take as much vacation as well.

#1 to me is Districts, districts, districts. It is completely unacceptable that my team got 17 qual matches for $9,000 of registration this year while those lucky to be in districts got 24 for $5,000.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

Oh man, don't even get me started on the whole name badge fiasco last year. Is that a thing this year still? Because I really hope it isn't. What a waste of time.

My family and I went as spectators on Saturday last year. Me, two boys, very pregnant wife. We had not registered - we didn't know we were supposed to as non-participants. They literally did not know how to handle us. We almost just up and left.

[Jake177]

Originally Posted by George A.

My one gripe is that a team competing in a district can travel to a regional and win an award there and qualify for Championships. I'm not here to argue the merits for and against it, but it always left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth that a team A) can pay the same amount as tam B) and gets different competition because of where they are located.

This is definitely an area where teams in a District system have an unfair advantage. I agree that keeping District teams from competing at a Regional would mitigate this, but I'm curious if there's a middle ground somewhere.

• How would your opinion change if District teams competing at a Regional were not eligible for the three qualifying awards (Chairman's, Engineering Inspiration, and Rookie All-Star)?
• What if a District team on a Regional-winning alliance generated a Wild Card Slot? In the current system, they are essentially taking up two Championship slots, one from the Regional and one from their home District's allocation. It seems like a Wild Card would be a reasonable way of awarding one of those slots to another deserving team at the Regional.

[George A.]

Originally Posted by Jake177

This is definitely an area where teams in a District system have an unfair advantage. I agree that keeping District teams from competing at a Regional would mitigate this, but I'm curious if there's a middle ground somewhere.

• How would your opinion change if District teams competing at a Regional were not eligible for the three qualifying awards (Chairman's, Engineering Inspiration, and Rookie All-Star)?
• What if a District team on a Regional-winning alliance generated a Wild Card Slot? In the current system, they are essentially taking up two Championship slots, one from the Regional and one from their home District's allocation. It seems like a Wild Card would be a reasonable way of awarding one of those slots to another deserving team at the Regional.

I actually feel like that's an amazing middle ground and one that wouldn't be too entirely hard to implement.

I realize that it is in the rules now that a team competing in a district can go to a regional after they have picked their first two plays (which I suppose is an unfair advantage as they have to wait until window 3 and see which regionals still have openings), but at the end of the day for the same $9000 they get 3 plays with exponential more opportunities to qualify for Championships over a non-district team which only gets 2 plays and only has a small handful of ways to the championships.

Having them ineligible for the "Big-3" (CA, EI, RAS) would mitigate this a bit and give more chances for local teams, and if a district team would allow for a non-district team to take their spot to Championships I think it would be a big step in the right direction.

[Hot_Copper_Frog]

Originally Posted by FarmerJohn

FIRST needs to stop being so arrogant/selfish and admit that IFI has better lower and middle level robotics competitions, and an overall better competition structure. FRC tops all, but VRC is better than FTC in every way possible, and VIQ gives teams more out of their season than FLL does. And they both cost a whole lot less. If FIRST really cared about inspiring students they'd either try their best to actually make these lower and middle level competitions better or just tell students to do VIQ and VRC. If you're promoting an educational program whose alternative is better in every way, you're not in it for the students, you're in it for yourself.

Could you elaborate a little bit about why you believe VRC is "better in every way" than FLL and FTC programs?

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

Originally Posted by FarmerJohn

FIRST needs to stop being so arrogant/selfish and admit that IFI has better lower and middle level robotics competitions, and an overall better competition structure. FRC tops all, but VRC is better than FTC in every way possible, and VIQ gives teams more out of their season than FLL does. And they both cost a whole lot less. If FIRST really cared about inspiring students they'd either try their best to actually make these lower and middle level competitions better or just tell students to do VIQ and VRC. If you're promoting an educational program whose alternative is better in every way, you're not in it for the students, you're in it for yourself.

Agreed. Having mentored both FLL and Vex IQ for the first time this year, I like Vex IQ a whole lot more than FLL. I like the field better(and that you can pack it in a box) and the fact that the game isn't just a mess of a bunch of random tasks. Having the students focus on one or two tasks and do them the best they can is more similar to Vex, FTC, and FRC style games. I also like how in qualifying matches, it's team based on not just solo play. I can't comment on Vex vs FTC as I've never done either.

[jweston]

Originally Posted by Jake177

This is definitely an area where teams in a District system have an unfair advantage. I agree that keeping District teams from competing at a Regional would mitigate this, but I'm curious if there's a middle ground somewhere.

• How would your opinion change if District teams competing at a Regional were not eligible for the three qualifying awards (Chairman's, Engineering Inspiration, and Rookie All-Star)?
• What if a District team on a Regional-winning alliance generated a Wild Card Slot? In the current system, they are essentially taking up two Championship slots, one from the Regional and one from their home District's allocation. It seems like a Wild Card would be a reasonable way of awarding one of those slots to another deserving team at the Regional.

Definitely like the idea of making district teams ineligible for qualifying awards at regional events. The wild card slot feels a bit weird, but maybe if there was no reward except recognition (i.e. no World qualification) to tempt district teams to compete at a regional, maybe a district team regional win would be less likely to happen. Hard to say.

I see regionals as the equivelant of a district championship for geographical areas that don't have enough FRC concentration (yet) to make a district model work. Teams in regional areas have no opportunity to get into a district championship. It doesn't seem right to have district teams take advantage. District teams have a lot more opportunity to gain extra experience and unbag time at district events over regional teams. Plus district teams potentially have another opportunity at their own district championship.

[Jake177]

Originally Posted by jweston

The wild card slot feels a bit weird, but maybe if there was no reward except recognition (i.e. no World qualification) to tempt district teams to compete at a regional, maybe a district team regional win would be less likely to happen. Hard to say.

I wasn't trying to suggest that a District team on a Regional-winning alliance should not qualify for a Championship slot. I don't think that would be fair. They would receive a slot from their home District's total allocation, as they currently do, and the slot they earned from the Regional would become a Wild Card instead of essentially going unused.

[FarmerJohn]

Originally Posted by Hot_Copper_Frog

Could you elaborate a little bit about why you believe VRC is "better in every way" than FLL and FTC programs?

Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb)

Agreed. Having mentored both FLL and Vex IQ for the first time this year, I like Vex IQ a whole lot more than FLL. I like the field better(and that you can pack it in a box) and the fact that the game isn't just a mess of a bunch of random tasks. Having the students focus on one or two tasks and do them the best they can is more similar to Vex, FTC, and FRC style games. I also like how in qualifying matches, it's team based on not just solo play. I can't comment on Vex vs FTC as I've never done either.

I could write a book about why VIQ/VRC are superior to FLL/FTC. Alongside the reasons listed above, teams get to compete more for less money. If we make the assumption that time involved in the program is related to inspiration (a very safe assumption, since FIRST is always promoting spending more and more time in their programs), VIQ and VRC provide more inspiration per dollar due to the greater amount of time invested into the program by the students through increased match count and number of competitions and the decreased cost of competing. Then you get to the quality of competitions. In the VEX programs, the focus of the competition is the experience of the teams and students, and they spare no expense when it comes to making things easy and accessible to teams. FLL/FTC, on the other hand, are a little less team focused. It seems that FLL/FTC care more about the quantity of teams competing ($) than the quality of each team's experience. Then you can look at the games. FLL is a mess of missions that relies on perfect programming (or perfect parents) to succeed. All age groups compete together so the younger students rarely come out on top of the older ones. VIQ, on the other hand, is less software intensive, which not only makes it more accessible to younger students, but also makes it more difficult for someone other than students to do a majority of the work. Elementary and middle schoolers are separated so that nobody is competing against someone with years of experience that they do not have. The games are simpler and involve more practice and iteration and less lining up in base carefully. FTC games are, as I've experienced, unorganized and imbalanced, and it doesn't seem like the game design committee has ever competed in an a enjoyable game before. VRC games are straightforward, easy to explain, and easy to watch, plus they're designed by a group of people who know competitive robotics inside and out. VRC is also separate by age groups so that high schoolers and middle schoolers don't compete together. I'm sure other people have examples as well, but these are my experiences.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

Interesting, I never realized this information was available.

For the Citrus Dad, if you notice the Algorithm rtfdnow linked to is from 2008. 2007 attempted to sort teams so the best teams would play against each other, rather than only with each other. They essentially proke the teams into 3 tiers by team age (team number) and each alliance was made up of one team per tier. Since Average team performance tends to be higher in older teams, this lead to high performing, young teams seeding well ahead of older teams with similar performing robots. This was widely seen as a disaster by just about everyone.

If memory serves FIRST actually solicited algorithm suggestions during/after the 2007 season.

If you have a good solution to the issue then write it up, and submit it to first. I am sure they would be willing to listen.

I don't think anyone thinks the algorithm is perfect, but the luck of match schedules is part of the game.

The ranking should be done by an actual performance measure such as district points equivalent or OPR. (We'd probably use the previous year as a reasonable proxy.) Team number isn't a particularly good metric these days.

I have an idea of how to structure this arrangement but will wait until after Champs to write it up. The problem with "luck of match schedules" is that it is arbitrary, and teams are not viewing it as unfair. I'm not sure why it should be considered "part of the game"--it's not an obvious consideration. And as I pointed out "random" doesn't equal "fair" over such a small number of opportunities. The CVR and SVR situations are not uncommon in the large regionals. I suspect that the 2007 schedule was implemented incorrectly.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

The ranking should be done by an actual performance measure such as district points equivalent or OPR. (We'd probably use the previous year as a reasonable proxy.) Team number isn't a particularly good metric these days.

I have an idea of how to structure this arrangement but will wait until after Champs to write it up. The problem with "luck of match schedules" is that it is arbitrary, and teams are not viewing it as unfair. I'm not sure why it should be considered "part of the game"--it's not an obvious consideration. And as I pointed out "random" doesn't equal "fair" over such a small number of opportunities. The CVR and SVR situations are not uncommon in the large regionals. I suspect that the 2007 schedule was implemented incorrectly.

No, it was just BAD.

And let's stop calling the current schedule random. It is not. And one of the metrics it looks at is "number of times played with or against".

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by FarmerJohn

I could write a book about why VIQ/VRC are superior to FLL/FTC. Alongside the reasons listed above, teams get to compete more for less money. If we make the assumption that time involved in the program is related to inspiration (a very safe assumption, since FIRST is always promoting spending more and more time in their programs), VIQ and VRC provide more inspiration per dollar due to the greater amount of time invested into the program by the students through increased match count and number of competitions and the decreased cost of competing. Then you get to the quality of competitions. In the VEX programs, the focus of the competition is the experience of the teams and students, and they spare no expense when it comes to making things easy and accessible to teams. FLL/FTC, on the other hand, are a little less team focused. It seems that FLL/FTC care more about the quantity of teams competing ($) than the quality of each team's experience. Then you can look at the games. FLL is a mess of missions that relies on perfect programming (or perfect parents) to succeed. All age groups compete together so the younger students rarely come out on top of the older ones. VIQ, on the other hand, is less software intensive, which not only makes it more accessible to younger students, but also makes it more difficult for someone other than students to do a majority of the work. Elementary and middle schoolers are separated so that nobody is competing against someone with years of experience that they do not have. The games are simpler and involve more practice and iteration and less lining up in base carefully. FTC games are, as I've experienced, unorganized and imbalanced, and it doesn't seem like the game design committee has ever competed in an a enjoyable game before. VRC games are straightforward, easy to explain, and easy to watch, plus they're designed by a group of people who know competitive robotics inside and out. VRC is also separate by age groups so that high schoolers and middle schoolers don't compete together. I'm sure other people have examples as well, but these are my experiences.

It seems most of your areas of concern center around the competition aspects. How would you compare the non-competition aspects of the programs? The Core Values and research projects are a central aspect of FIRST Lego League, and you are seemingly not considering them here.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

And let's stop calling the current schedule random. It is not. And one of the metrics it looks at is "number of times played with or against".

Additionally, one of the things the FTA/Scorekeeper looks at after generating a candidate schedule is the number of unique partners and opponents for each team. If one team has a wildly different number for one of those metrics, that is grounds to run the MatchMaker algorithm a second time.

[Lil' Lavery]

I've participated in quite a few different sized tournaments, and ran the gamut on types of schedules encountered.

2007 was a disaster. The basis of the scheduling algorithm was that it divided teams into three "bins" based on team number (lowest third, middle third, and upper third). Each alliance contained one member from each bin. As far as I recall, this was done by the algorithm maker without the solicitation of FIRST HQ. There were improvements made to the system as the season progressed, but the concept was fundamentally flawed.

In 2007 week one, the system was impossibly bad. If you study team 116's schedule from VCU you'll begin to see why. Because VCU had 66 teams, a number divisible by 6 (the quantity of teams in each match), VCU ended up with a very rigid schedule. The teams in lowest age bracket ended up facing one another every single match. In the case of 116, that meant all 8 qualification matches were against 122. 116's middle bracket opponents in one match would be their middle bracket partners in their next match (in graduating numerical order). This is obviously unacceptable.

While FIRST and the algorithm designers rectified the most egregious of those errors as the season progressed, both the fundamental concept aned execution were still flawed. While the practice match schedules from Championship 2007 don't exist explicitly, you can determine them by looking at the first few matches on any given teams' qualification schedule (they were identical, albeit with filler line teams as necessary). That's both an execution and a conceptual issue. While the best of the best teams could often overcome the biased schedules, the rankings were rather skewed that season. Younger teams capable of executing the game had a distinct advantage. As a result, you saw a number of "weaker" alliance captains. 1712 was not a top 8 robot on Galileo that season, but being a sophomore team capable of scoring consistently gave 1712 a very favorable schedule when matched against predominantly other second and third year teams. This is a conceptual flaw.

Regardless of how you determine team skill, whether it be age, OPR, district points, or some other metric, attempting to create a biased schedule creates inequality. When you create a metric-based strength of schedule constraint on the scheduling algorithm, it ends up creating additional reward for teams who outperform their previous metric (and implicitly punishing teams unfortunate enough to draw them). The same applies in reverse to teams that underperform their metrics. Think of how a rookie star like 5985 or 5817 would fit into such a system, and the impact they would have on scheduling. Think of how a powerhouse team that lost key mentors would impact the system.

An example of this is looking at the OPR for 2007 Galileo. Every team in the top 15 was a member of the highest numbered (youngest) bin. While the exponential scoring on 2007 makes OPR essentially useless for that game, this demonstrates the scheduling bias in play (and also demonstrates how introducing a strength of schedule constraint ends up invalidating the metrics you're using to create the strength of schedule).

More importantly, once you start adding additional constraints to the schedule, you have to be more flexible on the existing constraints. That was one of the huge issues with the 2007 algorithm, and is a fundamental problem with any attempt at adding a strength of schedule constraint. When you factor in strength of schedule, suddenly you have to be more willing to flex on one or more of the other constraints (minimum time between matches, round parity, minimum schedule repeats, etc). While the execution of the 2007 scheduling algorithm was tremendously poor in this respect (namely in terms of minimizing repeats), it's not purely an execution issue.