FAHA: How to convince a team that FIRST is more than winning

[Bharat Nain]

Thanks to the original poster for re-starting FAHA with such a great topic. The following FIRST-a-holic believes that his/her FIRST team should strive to a new level of engineering while the rest of the team believes in doing enough to win. What do you think? Is the team right, or should the original poster continue to push his/her views?

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I come from a very small to be third year team, with only 7-9 regular members, one teacher, and barely enough money to pay for the kit and one regional. This year, we were a little overambitious, and had both a weak ramp and a weak arm, when a little more effort into one or the other would have made a decent scoring or rampbot, and did less than great at our regional.

For our offseason event, we agreed to get rid of the ramp, and put a lot of effort into creating a completely new, more effective manipulator. Unfortunatly, due to spring sports, about half the team was unable to attend meetings regularly.

At the event, a programming glitch with the arm caused it to be inneffective for this match. We were forced to play defense (with a largely unmodified kitbot with 2 CIMs+Banebots,) but due to strong alliance partners, we pulled out a close win. The problems started when the drive team, who had not been there during the arm overhaul, decided that they would not use the arm. There exact words were "But it's so much more fun to just ram things"

Through good alliance luck (In EVERY match, we had a scorer in the top ten and a decent hybrid that was primarily a ramp, don't ask me how) we seeded in the top 8, despite mediocre defence and nothing else. We were declined few times before each of our picks (at this tournament, if you declined in the first round, you could still be picked in the second,) and pulled together an alliance similar to the ones we had had all day, and made it to the semifinals.

This finish secured us a new sponsor, which will give us a machine shop, plus ~$10,000 for expenses beyond the entry fee. The problem is that much of our team believes that what we did last year is the way to go. So the team voted today that, no matter what the game is, we will build a box on wheels.

I am a supporter of the kitbot, but would be shocked if FIRST gave us parts to snap together a functional competition robot in days. Effectivly, my team is planning to do this, since the robot has already been designed, and everything needed comes pre-made out of the red and blue totes. Also, shouldn't a team strive to do more than they did last year? How can I convince my team to build more than a box on wheels, even though it may not seed well?

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FIRST-a-holic Anonymous mailbox is a place to share your concern and frustration about your FIRST experience anonymously. It is the perfect place if you just want someone to listen, or ask for advice when you don’t know what to do. Submit your letters today at the FIRST-a-holic anonymous mailbox forum. If you wish to respond to this thread anonymously, please PM Beth or Bharat with your response and thread title.

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