[FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Regionals can partially save their poor value proposition by starting qual matches Thursday after lunch. A majority of the personnel required to run those matches are already there, you will just be really hurting on spares at key positions like refereeing.

Whether or not SBD ever goes away, a move to give RPCs an option to "hybrid" their regional into a regional on a DCMP schedule with 6 hours of bag time should be allowed by FIRST.

I've never seen one of my 60-team regionals get more than half of the robots passed inspection by lunch on Thursday. I would worry a lot about that trying to make this switch...

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

I've never seen one of my 60-team regionals get more than half of the robots passed inspection by lunch on Thursday. I would worry a lot about that trying to make this switch...

Yeah... and Wil, the refs are already there, because of practice matches (well, mostly there, as some are often still on their way early in the matches). The problem is, PRACTICE matches start at noon right now! So really, what you're saying is to completely eliminate practice matches from regionals. Or move them back to the morning, thus shortchanging the teams that need them the most. Which... would negate all the good effects of the unbag time.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

I've never seen one of my 60-team regionals get more than half of the robots passed inspection by lunch on Thursday. I would worry a lot about that trying to make this switch...

Districts start inspections on day zero and have practice matches on the morning of day 1. That is a traditional* DCMP schedule.

*Districts with team counts under ~80 run a DCMP like a regular district event.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by EricH

Yeah... and Wil, the refs are already there, because of practice matches (well, mostly there, as some are often still on their way early in the matches). The problem is, PRACTICE matches start at noon right now! So really, what you're saying is to completely eliminate practice matches from regionals. Or move them back to the morning, thus shortchanging the teams that need them the most. Which... would negate all the good effects of the unbag time.

"Shortchanging"

Explain that to the team at a district event you gave the same number of unbag hours to but no practice matches?

[Hitchhiker 42]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

"Shortchanging"

Explain that to the team at a district event you gave the same number of unbag hours to but no practice matches?

To be fair, we would have 2x the bag hours as a typical regional team because we would have 2 events instead of 1 (or 3 vs. 2).

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Districts start inspections on day zero and have practice matches on the morning of day 1. That is a traditional* DCMP schedule.

*Districts with team counts under ~80 run a DCMP like a regular district event.

You do realize that at DCMP, every team has already been through two events, so they've been inspected twice already and most of them are probably ready for inspection pretty quickly after they load in, right? At regionals, that's not the case...

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

You do realize that at DCMP, every team has already been through two events, so they've been inspected twice already and most of them are probably ready for inspection pretty quickly after they load in, right? At regionals, that's not the case...

They haven't been through inspection at their first district event, which allows them no more than 4-5 hours on day zero and two to three hours on day one to get inspected. It's really easy to find this information out but you seem to have trouble seeking it, so here you go:

Week 1 CHS District - Northern Virginia Event Schedule (2016)
Week 6 Chesapeake District Championship Schedule (2016)
Minnesota North Star Regional Schedule (2016)

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

"Shortchanging"

Explain that to the team at a district event you gave the same number of unbag hours to but no practice matches?

District teams, at least at every district I've been to get practice matches. They just aren't scheduled.

At Districts in Michigan, Thursday nights, in addition to load-in and inspections, teams who have been inspected may get in the queue and get put into practice matches on a first-come-first-serve basis. And I don't think I have ever seen a team get into one of these queues that did not get a chance to play at least 1 match (unless they showed up like 5 minutes prior to closing that is).

Not all teams can take advantage of this at their first event as some are still not finished with inspection until Friday morning (we've been this team a few times), but by their second event almost all teams get the opportunity to have a practice match or two.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

"Shortchanging"

Explain that to the team at a district event you gave the same number of unbag hours to but no practice matches?

In case your memory isn't working, I believe we did agree that the exact number of hours out of the bag was something to be worked out later--doesn't have to be exactly even, but has to be something in the "fair" range. BTW, Districts are inherently unfair to Regional teams. (Cue smart-arse half-troll discussion here.)


If the start of inspection is not moved to Wednesday night on the "start matches at noon on Thursday" schedule, the teams that will hurt the most are the very ones that the out-of-bag time is supposed to be helping. Out here, the inspectors start camping out in pits around 6 PM on Thursday if the inspector/team ratio is sufficiently high. By the start of quals, we can usually have all but maybe 1-2 teams passing--and they've generally got multiple inspectors and other teams helping out. If there's early inspection, that can probably be moved up a bit--but at what cost?

[D.Allred]

This is a really good thread. I’ve seen more perspectives presented that really make me try and understand the impact to teams.

Originally Posted by gblake

"I advocate tightening the current stop-build restrictions because I don't want to see the total FRC program slide too far down the slippery slope of over-emphasizing the competition part of an otherwise well-rounded FRC program." See the next paragraph for an explanation of why I wrote this.

In this thread about a survey about Stop Build Day, I think it would be useful and interesting if each post (even those that are part of a multi-post exchange) began with a short sentence or phrase stating why the poster opposes/supports eliminating, weakening, loosening, tightening, keeping, strengthening (or is undecided about) the current stop build rules.

...
Blake

Good idea.

"I advocate for eliminating bag day or at least have robot access periods because I believe it will benefit my team. My decision made no attempt to ascertain if this will be a benefit for all teams or the overall health of FIRST/FRC."

Our team has a goal to win every competition. I’m not claiming we are at that level – it’s a goal. To help meet this goal, we have been building practice robots for the past 3 seasons. Practice and making minor improvements to increase scoring effectiveness or taking time to improve autonomous modes have been the best investments.

With access periods, we would probably invest more time in improving the competition robot instead of sinking a lot of resources in a practice robot. This logic breaks down under the current rules if we qualify for Championships and have to ship the robot immediately after our last competition.

Our strategy would not change that much with open build. We may try more aggressive adjustments like adding on another feature assuming we wouldn’t negatively impact existing performance levels.

I only have personal observation and not much data to comment on this change across FRC. But there seem to be some claims that don’t make sense. Here’s the biggest one to me.

More build time will improve competition level.
No. More time to repeat the same process you have been using will not improve your result.

We’ve set a goal to finish the first robot in 4 to 5 weeks using a build schedule of about 18 to 20 hours per week. The idea is play with “version 1.1 or 1.2” robot by our week 1 regional. This season we are switching to VersaFrame construction instead of milling our own tube and gussets. We should be able to build the robot a bit faster if we are only manufacturing a few specialty parts. Getting to version 1.3 or even 2.1 may be possible.

As Jim Zondag pointed out in his analysis, about half of FRC only plays one event. Teams that play more events tend to improve. I don’t think eliminating bag day will have a dramatic impact on your first event performance. One-and-done teams will probably perform about the same as today. In other words, a district format which gives you more opportunity to play seems to be a proven improvement model. Open build makes will make it easier to make implement improvements between your first and second events plus get time to test it. Maybe no bagging requirement will have the same impact for team as districts have.

My argument may seem odd since I’m stating a change would help my team, but not most teams. My fear is most people will spend time trying to do more than do better.

David

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by D.Allred

With access periods, we would probably invest more time in improving the competition robot instead of sinking a lot of resources in a practice robot. This logic breaks down under the current rules if we qualify for Championships and have to ship the robot immediately after our last competition.

I completely forgot about this current rule, thanks for bringing this up.

We would need to change the rule to allow for a robot ship date before championships for all teams. I would assume the same day as the shipping date after the latest district championship for your 2 Champs would make a good starting date.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

I completely forgot about this current rule, thanks for bringing this up.

We would need to change the rule to allow for a robot ship date before championships for all teams. I would assume the same day as the shipping date after the latest district championship for your 2 Champs would make a good starting date.

I'll buy that. Tuesday after Week 7, this year, if I'm not mistaken. Hopefully that method wouldn't overload FedEx.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by EricH

I'll buy that. Tuesday after Week 7, this year, if I'm not mistaken. Hopefully that method wouldn't overload FedEx.

For North Champs, Tuesday after week 6 for South Champs

[Fusion_Clint]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

I completely forgot about this current rule, thanks for bringing this up.

We would need to change the rule to allow for a robot ship date before championships for all teams. I would assume the same day as the shipping date after the latest district championship for your 2 Champs would make a good starting date.

Are the teams going to pay for that expedited shipping or are we expecting FEDEX to pay for 800 teams to quick ship freight?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Fusion_Clint

Are the teams going to pay for that expedited shipping or are we expecting FEDEX to pay for 800 teams to quick ship freight?

That's the same timeframe as the Week 7 qualifiers currently get, about 2-3 weeks. And if you phrase it as "the deadline is X, but shipping earlier* is allowed and encouraged", I think enough teams would take that suggestion that it'd go a bit smoother.


*Earlier would be loosely defined as "any time between the Tuesday after your last Regional/DCMP/District Event and the deadline". Exactly how early would be team-dependent, obviously, but it would be team choice as to when they thought they were ready--or when the mentors thought they were burning out.