[FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey

[EricH]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

All of these lower the level of play, and reduce the quality of the show.

First off: I'm inclined to agree. But... What does that have to do with enforcing a 6-week build period? Which, if I recall correctly, is the current topic of the thread, at least in a general sort of way.

Right. Not much. (And, just to troll a little bit, you been warned: If you want "quality of show", advocate for more Regionals. Without the production company, the show quality drops. [/troll] [/sarcasm])

Also note that I did point out that at least the second and third ideas were non-starters--either team outcry or sheer impracticality. Matter of fact, I think the inverse of the second needs to be the case, where teams are "required" to do multiple events--see also "Districts"--but some areas are still trying to figure out how to get there (and some of those may need some "input" from teams and/or HQ).



I'm inclined to agree that the level of play will probably go down. The question is, will it go down simply from "elite" to "really good", or will it drop even farther, and how much of a drop in play can we tolerate? Remember that most of the teams in this specific discussion are at least average, ranging up to elite, and I'd also suspect that almost all are working towards being up in that elite/powerhouse range. What about the teams that AREN'T at that level? What are their opinions? I think the survey will be rather interesting in that regard. If there's a clear divide, particularly with the high-level teams saying "take it away" and the lower-level teams saying "keep it", that'll be an interesting discussion leading into 2018, to put it mildly.

I seem to recall hearing--or hearing about, it's been a while--where someone (I want to say a rookie team) AT KICKOFF asked Woodie why so short a time as 6 weeks. And the answer was something to the effect of "Because we're trying to make it easier for you", followed by a more detailed explanation that I can't remember all of. Now remember, this is back when 2v2 (I'm pretty sure it was before 4v0) was the latest and greatest game twist, so times have changed.


Basically, you can't have it all. You cannot have an "enforced" 6 weeks without extra rules and giving up level of play. You cannot claim 6 week builds and have teams continue working beyond that, legally. You really cannot allow unbagged primary robots right up until competition and call it a 6-week build! (Unless you're Palmetto '16... )



What I think is going on, possibly, is that FIRST has realized that they're in the state where a majority of teams legally work beyond the 6 weeks, despite bags, "Stop Build Day", and encouragement to put tools down. So NOW (some time too late) they're trying to figure out how to extricate themselves from this, and how the teams view the "Tools down" signal, and whether they need to do anything about it. They may be (rather desperately) trying to get teams to say that having a Stop Build is better than not, in order to justify putting the lid back on Pandora's Box. Given the response here, I'm betting that they decide to phase out Stop Build, but it won't be all at once.

To be honest, without the 2010 (or was it '09?) snowstorms, I'm not sure we'd be this far along this soon. That's the first time Withholding was increased from 25 lb, and it never went that low again (65 lb was the number due to the snowstorms in MAR/NE/NY, as I recall). Had that not happened, we might still be discussing the value of bagging robots instead of shipping them, rather than discussing the value of bagging vs. not bagging.