One machine?

[ngreen]

Originally Posted by Descartes

Gleeaagh....


We have become jaded and cynical in these past years. We always plan our bot to be able to do it all by itself. As bad as that sounds, we can't ever take the chance of planning on our partner being able to do anything. Year after year, match after match, we get alliance partners who either

A. Break down.
B. Aren't any good.
C. Rookies who have a student coaching and rotate their drivers.

Even so, this year we have strategies available for every situation. We can just as easily perform excellently with a good partner to back us up, or go it alone if they can't.

Student coaching is bad??! And rookies are bad??! I've got a trophy and top 8 finish in archimedes to prove different. Not gonna flame on it though.

It is nice to do everything but I see the one's that specialize being the one's who do well in this years competition. Again, there is nearly too much to do to expect to do everything well. I have a feeling a least one team will prove me wrong but I stick to being able to do a couple things well and not worrying about doing everything. A minute forty-five is short.

[Matt Adams]

Originally Posted by ngreen

Student coaching is bad??! And rookies are bad??!

I would say in general, rookies are poor partners.

I feel the flames already coming... however, let me do some explaining. There are exceptions... but read on.

FIRST has been around for so long, that most the exceptional "rookie" teams aren't really rookies in the traditional sense. As many people would agree, there's an exponential improvement during the first 2 or 3 years that a team is in place, and I would say that many of the best "rookie" teams out there are not completely oblivious to what FIRST is about. Having 1 or 2 people with FIRST experience makes a world of difference to the "rookie" team. In general, FIRST teams aren't as poor as the weakest link, but strong as the strongest members. Having a few FIRST experienced people on board can take literally years off the learning curve for teams. Having a handful of experienced team members can litterally take 500 - 800 off a rookie's team number.

Can we all admit that many of us had a lot of room for growth our rookie year? Those of you that had exceptional rookie years probably had one or two mentors in FIRST to start up your team... there are obvious exceptions.

I'll throw a bone out there and say that experience (read: learning from past mistakes, knowledge of FIRST competitive history) is among the most deciding factor for competive (read: not necessarily most inspiring) teams.

Hence, I think we can be realistic and say it's understandable, though not completely fair, to be slightly apprehensive to see that you're paired with team #3000 with 4 giggling freshmen prancing over to be your partners and alliance coach.

Matt

[ngreen]

Originally Posted by Matt Adams

I would say in general, rookies are poor partners.

I feel the flames already coming... however, let me do some explaining. There are exceptions... but read on.

FIRST has been around for so long, that most the exceptional "rookie" teams aren't really rookies in the traditional sense. As many people would agree, there's an exponential improvement during the first 2 or 3 years that a team is in place, and I would say that many of the best "rookie" teams out there are not completely oblivious to what FIRST is about. Having 1 or 2 people with FIRST experience makes a world of difference to the "rookie" team. In general, FIRST teams aren't as poor as the weakest link, but strong as the strongest members. Having a few FIRST experienced people on board can take literally years off the learning curve for teams. Having a handful of experienced team members can litterally take 500 - 800 off a rookie's team number.

Can we all admit that many of us had a lot of room for growth our rookie year? Those of you that had exceptional rookie years probably had one or two mentors in FIRST to start up your team... there are obvious exceptions.

We were rookies in the true sense. Other than tips we picked up from mentor teams like 476 and 938 we had no previous FIRST experience. None of us had even heard of FIRST until that fall and the closest experience to robotics was one of the mentors had done solar car stuff. I'm just putting this here to keep people from under estimating the ability of the rookies. They might know more than you think.

My other heartburn is always about adult coaches but I won't open that can of worms right now. I just think if a team has more than 3 responsible members of that team with knowledge of the robot and game the drive team should be all students. Yeah I don't want to flame. Just opinions.