paper: Stop the Stop Build

[AllenGregoryIV]

First off, Jim thank you for putting this together, it's an excellent read.

The middle ground proposal is a very good step in the right direction. The only thing it doesn't easily allow for is teams to hold scrimmages on weekends when they aren't competing. In this proposal it is still advantageous to compete more often during the season. This becomes less of a problem once all areas are in districts as competing additional times is less expensive and you are already competing more often. For teams that are not in a district system I could see how having more than 8 hours of ROBOT ACCESS time would be needed to get the full benefits of what a practice bot currently allows.

At that point we are just changing a single variable, I do strongly agree with the plan in general.

[NShep98]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

For teams that are not in a district system I could see how having more than 8 hours of ROBOT ACCESS time would be needed to get the full benefits of what a practice bot currently allows.

This is actually where my confusion came in as to how this would interact with the current District Access Period, because the point of districts getting extra time is to offset the additional day regionals get.

[Collin Fultz]

Originally Posted by NShep98

This is actually where my confusion came in as to how this would interact with the current District Access Period, because the point of districts getting extra time is to offset the additional day regionals get.

Perhaps with this proposal Regional Events could start their matches after lunch on Thursday, allowing more time for more matches.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Collin Fultz

Perhaps with this proposal Regional Events could start their matches after lunch on Thursday, allowing more time for more matches.

Someone just made that suggestion in the other thread. We can do that, provided that we get a district schedule as far as load-in/inspection. That is, we start load-in/inspection at 5 PM Wednesday, practice Thursday morning, and pray that enough refs make it by noon to start.

Sound reasonable?

Now do that with a 40-team regional. You're only adding another half-day of matches, so that regional now gets about 16 matches/team, more than any district, before elims. What was that about district events giving more plays than a regional? (Or else you add massive downtime/slow cycles.) Oh, you don't like that part of it. So you're going to have two regional schedules, one for large and one for small. How confusing will that be?


Remember, Thursday from noon to 6 is practice matches at regionals. And some teams can't even make their last scheduled match (or the filler line) and have to come to the field later to connect robot to field. In order to speed that up to be from 9 to noon or so, the regionals are going to need extra inspection time on Wednesday evening, particularly large early-season regionals.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by EricH

Someone just made that suggestion in the other thread. We can do that, provided that we get a district schedule as far as load-in/inspection. That is, we start load-in/inspection at 5 PM Wednesday, practice Thursday morning, and pray that enough refs make it by noon to start.

Sound reasonable?

Yes, because regions are already doing that right now.

Now do that with a 40-team regional. You're only adding another half-day of matches, so that regional now gets about 16 matches/team, more than any district, before elims. What was that about district events giving more plays than a regional? (Or else you add massive downtime/slow cycles.) Oh, you don't like that part of it. So you're going to have two regional schedules, one for large and one for small. How confusing will that be?

16 matches for $5000 still comes out behind districts offering up 24 at the same price. Regionals follow the same schedule template handed down to them from Manchester, but without any cap to a regional outside of physical space in the venue, very few regionals are exactly alike.

[PayneTrain]

I also want to add that while I do not speak for Collin, I believe he is a former FRC Team Advocate at FIRST HQ and the current president of IndianaFIRST. I imagine he would like whatever we can try out to improve the team experience.

[Collin Fultz]

Originally Posted by EricH

Now do that with a 40-team regional. You're only adding another half-day of matches, so that regional now gets about 16 matches/team, more than any district, before elims.

In 2016, around 64% of Regional teams only attended one event. 16 Qual Matches at a Regional where around 2/3 of the teams there will only compete on that weekend sounds pretty great!

[EricH]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Yes, because regions are already doing that right now.

Your Wednesday "inspection" at a regional is "Here's the green tag saying you can open the bag tomorrow morning, be safe setting up your pit". (Or you get the dreaded "red tag": See the LRI to clear the lockup form, withholding, or other "oops".) Same as the Thursday "early load".

Districts are doing inspection on load-in night. Champs is doing inspection at uncrate. Regionals? Sign form, check withholding and bag integrity, and make sure that no work is done on the robot.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by EricH

Your Wednesday "inspection" at a regional is "Here's the green tag saying you can open the bag tomorrow morning, be safe setting up your pit". (Or you get the dreaded "red tag": See the LRI to clear the lockup form, withholding, or other "oops".) Same as the Thursday "early load".

Districts are doing inspection on load-in night. Champs is doing inspection at uncrate. Regionals? Sign form, check withholding and bag integrity, and make sure that no work is done on the robot.

I occasionally use the word "region" to describe an area in district events. Regionals are independent of a region.

Let me amend: events in FIRST at a size equivalent to a regional already do what you have described.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I occasionally use the word "region" to describe an area in district events. Regionals are independent of a region.

Let me amend: events in FIRST at a size equivalent to a regional already do what you have described.

And no (actual) regionals do that. I'm sure the teams could adjust (well... MOST of the teams, I can think of a few that are probably not going to catch the change easily), and the volunteers can probably adjust. Assuming that FIRST decided to make such a change.


BTW, just as a thought: If the context is going to make it confusing to use "region", such as above, it may be worth it to use a different term, as "region" can make some people think you're misspelling "regional". Just for the sake of clear communications. I often use "district area" to describe an area that runs district events, myself.

[Cothron Theiss]

-snip-

I mistook that "Page 2 of 5" for "Page 5 of 5." Please disregard.

[chapman1]

I oppose the elimination of Stop Build Day for two reasons:

1) One of the many benefits of FRC that I have touted is that kids are given a nearly impossible deadline of six weeks in which a robot must be envisioned, prototyped, built, tested and made ready for competition. "Nearly impossible" is the deadline that most often exists in real life. It's good practice.

2) From the perspective of a small, underfunded rural school team, eliminating the Stop Build Day would be one more way of favoring the larger, better funded urban teams:

2a) Our team has only a handful of mentors, and all are actively employed. Some have to take vacation time in order to attend after-school work sessions or to participate in weekday events. Further, when the competition season finally ends, we have to spend the next several months catching up with our personal and professional lives. Extending the build season would make it nearly impossible for us to ever catch up. We would lose mentors.

Similarly, students at our school are more often than not involved in multiple sports, drama, Business Professionals of America (BPA) and other activities - because there isn't enough kids to go around. They too do not need more time commitment.

2b) The larger, urban teams, with ready access to large corporate sponsorship already have an advantage by virtue of funding and resources. We drool at many of the machines we see, all CAD-designed and with parts cut by sponsors' waterjets. Larger teams can accomplish more in a day than can small teams - even without the funding & technology gaps.

Yet, smaller teams can still compete today - despite the "head start" the larger teams have - because their advantage is held to a specific period of time. If the amount of build days is extended any more, FRC might as well plan on an "elite" team-only competition - the gap between elites and the rest of the field would become so wide that smaller teams would have little hope of successfully competing.

__________________

[marshall]

Originally Posted by chapman1

I oppose the elimination of Stop Build Day for two reasons:

1) One of the many benefits of FRC that I have touted is that kids are given a nearly impossible deadline of six weeks in which a robot must be envisioned, prototyped, built, tested and made ready for competition. "Nearly impossible" is the deadline that most often exists in real life. It's good practice.

2) From the perspective of a small, underfunded rural school team, eliminating the Stop Build Day would be one more way of favoring the larger, better funded urban teams:

2a) Our team has only a handful of mentors, and all are actively employed. Some have to take vacation time in order to attend after-school work sessions or to participate in weekday events. Further, when the competition season finally ends, we have to spend the next several months catching up with our personal and professional lives. Extending the build season would make it nearly impossible for us to ever catch up. We would lose mentors.

Similarly, students at our school are more often than not involved in multiple sports, drama, Business Professionals of America (BPA) and other activities - because there isn't enough kids to go around. They too do not need more time commitment.

2b) The larger, urban teams, with ready access to large corporate sponsorship already have an advantage by virtue of funding and resources. We drool at many of the machines we see, all CAD-designed and with parts cut by sponsors' waterjets. Larger teams can accomplish more in a day than can small teams - even without the funding & technology gaps.

Yet, smaller teams can still compete today - despite the "head start" the larger teams have - because their advantage is held to a specific period of time. If the amount of build days is extended any more, FRC might as well plan on an "elite" team-only competition - the gap between elites and the rest of the field would become so wide that smaller teams would have little hope of successfully competing.

__________________

Did you read Jim's paper at least?

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by chapman1

Yet, smaller teams can still compete today - despite the "head start" the larger teams have - because their advantage is held to a specific period of time. If the amount of build days is extended any more, FRC might as well plan on an "elite" team-only competition - the gap between elites and the rest of the field would become so wide that smaller teams would have little hope of successfully competing.

I understand a lot of the points you have here and empathize with the struggles your team has from this position. But I just wanted to chime in at this part. It isn't true.

Your suggestion is that, on each given day, a "have not" team accomplishes X units of work while a "have" team accomplishes Y, where Y is greater than X (let's say, 2X). To you, the short build season means that you'll have 45*X hours, and they'll have 45*2X hours, and that the relative difference gets greater the longer the build season goes. But this isn't what's happening

In fact, right now, teams can get as much development time as they want, not just the six week build season. The catch is, they need to build a copy of their $3500 robot, and sink in roughly double the build time in the season, in order to do it. The time and financial luxury needed to do this is something that is certainly out of reach for a lot of the "have-nots" of FRC (at least, not without lots of hard work and dedicated, experienced leaders). Only a subset of FRC has this additional time available to them. Not all of them choose to use it, but many do.

So what's actually happening is, the have not teams have 45 days to work, and the have teams have over 100 days to work. This is a huge disparity, and right now, the have not teams have to work extremely hard to bring themselves up to a financial and time commitment level to get those extra days. All ending Stop Build Day would do, is to open this extended work window to every team. The powerhouse teams have to put in less work to get their 100 days, that's true - but the teams that couldn't do it at all suddenly have that option, and it results in a great improvement in quality and competitiveness if teams choose to use it.

Now, if no matter what, your team just can't build for more than 45 days a year, that's fine. Just don't build after some day. Teams across all the different levels of funding and competitiveness take varying amounts of time on and off depending on their needs. But should we stop the teams that want to continue working, but are stuck behind the $3500 wall between them and a practice robot?

If I could wave a magic wand and make it so that robots were built for 45 days, without any decrease in quality, and everyone got to take a break afterward, that would be really appealing. But we need to understand, that's not what's happening now, and we kind of have a worst of all worlds situation here.

[chapman1]

Originally Posted by marshall

Did you read Jim's paper at least?

Yep. I get it that many teams build two robots to get around the time limit. I get it that many will show up with 29.9 lbs. of improvements at every competition.

Did you take more than 10 seconds to actually consider my points and perspective?