[BB]: Regional Variations & Bagging It

[JVN]

In 2009 on Thursday at the Dallas and Houston regional events students of team 148 were kept busy from the time doors opened until the time doors closed assisting teams in getting their robots running. (Primarily the LARGE number of Texas rookie teams).

Many of these teams would not have been ready for their first match Friday morning, if it was not for this assistance.

If Thursday practice is eliminated, I guess we're expected to take that show "on the road" during build season?

Some people refer to Thursday as: "Practice Day"
Some people refer to Thursday as: "Pit Day"...

-John

[XaulZan11]

In regards to my previous post, I didn't say that qualification matches on Thursday was a good thing. I simply responded to a claim that matches on Thursday will lead to an even more unrepresentative top 8. I disagreed with that claim.

As it has been stated over and over in this thread, it will decrease the time the vets can spend helping with the rookies. This is a downside.

One positive (atleast in my mind), is that teams won't be able to rebuild their entire robot on Thursday. I've never been a fan of teams spending 6 weeks designing and building their robot, then see how the game is played and rebuild their entire robot to a sucessful design. I understand it is part of the engineering process (continous improvement) but it cheapens and downplays the 6 week build season too much, in my opinion.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Rich Kressly

I LOVE 10+ matches for all, let's hope we can get those struggling teams more functional prior to showing up at their first event.

You most definitely have a great point here. How often will it happen that a lot of teams will miss their first few qualification matches? It already happens a lot nowadays and the teams who are ready for their matches get screwed over. This already happens at NJ all the time (Team X is not ready for its first 2 quali matches. Team X's alliance partners are. The opponent alliance is two bots down also due to not being ready. 10 matches each? Doesn't seem like it now, does it.)

[Cory]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

One positive (atleast in my mind), is that teams won't be able to rebuild their entire robot on Thursday. I've never been a fan of teams spending 6 weeks designing and building their robot, then see how the game is played and rebuild their entire robot to a sucessful design. I understand it is part of the engineering process (continous improvement) but it cheapens and downplays the 6 week build season too much, in my opinion.

I feel like this is the exact spirit of engineering. If what you make is not optimal you do whatever you can to make it work right. If you have the ingenuity/know how to completely rework your design in 12 hours, more power to you.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Cory

I feel like this is the exact spirit of engineering. If what you make is not optimal you do whatever you can to make it work right. If you have the ingenuity/know how to completely rework your design in 12 hours, more power to you.

I feel the most inspired when a team is able to do this or assemble their entire machine on the day of competition (of course there has to be a design reason for this).

Take a look at what 973 did this year at LA and you'll be amazed by how inspired you can be by an empty frame compared to a beast of a machine within hours.

[Wayne C.]

Originally Posted by jspatz1

Bill's Blog states that shipping will not be provided to bagged regionals. It also states that robots will be taken home from bagged regionals, and then shipped by UPS to your next regional. If you are attending two consecutive bagged regionals (as we might), these two statements conflict. Will you take your own bagged bot from one bagged regional to the next, or will bots that have already been to a bagged regional be an exception and get shipped to the next? We will write to FIRST and ask, but maybe someone has already looked into this.

Does this bagging policy with no shipping exclude teams from outside a region shipping the robot TO that regional and out of it? Bagging is fine for the local people but it doesnt work at all for robots shipped in from distance.

It would be nice to know this before I register for something tomorrow

[Trying to Help]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

How many regionals have you been to that have all of the rookie and younger teams ready to start playing at 12:00 on Thursday?

Last year was our first year as a rookie team (lower team number because we had some experienced members but really started at square one last year) and I can tell you when we left on Thursday, our robot wasn't working. If it wasn't for the gracious help from Checkmate, Mayhem and Rhode Warriors (I think I've got that list right!), we would have been very, very sad rookies.

When do you think they'll list the schedule?

Trying to Help

[Collin Fultz]

I'm curious as to how a regional was deemed a "Bag & Tag" versus a "Shipped" regional. Anybody from a regional planning committee have any insight?

I ask mainly because when I saw Bill's post that more events would become B&T events, I assumed Boilermaker would be on the list. The average distance travelled to last year's BMR was 100 miles, with the max being something like 275.

So, anybody got any insight?

[Paul Copioli]

Since we were one of a very few teams that went to a non-bagging regional week 1, then to a bagging regional week 3 I will explain how it worked shipping from the event.

On Saturday of Midwest, we had to place our robot in the bag, lock it down, and place it in the crate. We shipped it using Fedex (or Sheppard, I can't remember) back home. We then took it with us to our Michigan district.

As far as a compressed practice day, etc. I hope they make it work like the districts worked. We had 8 hours starting the Sunday of the week of our next district to take our robot out of the bag and practice / work on the robot. The rules were a minimum unbagging of 30 minutes each session and a maximum of 8 hours. Practice day (Thursday) load in started at 6pm and was until 9pm. The main field was open for practice at this time. The better part of Friday morning was open practice and opening ceremonies was around 10:30am. Matches ran until 7pm and there were no Friday Awards. Teams got about 1/2 as much time to fix their robots as a regular regional, but also had the 8 hours during the week to make up for it.

I hope it works that way for these compressed regionals.

Paul

[Chris Fultz]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

Does this bagging policy with no shipping exclude teams from outside a region shipping the robot TO that regional and out of it? Bagging is fine for the local people but it doesnt work at all for robots shipped in from distance.

It would be nice to know this before I register for something tomorrow

I think the policy applies to the Regional, not the home location of the team attending it. If you are going to a bagging regional, you take your robot with you and take it back home - that might be 10 miles or 600 miles.

The wording states that there is no shipping at these regionals.

[Chris Fultz]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

As far as a compressed practice day, etc. I hope they make it work like the districts worked. We had 8 hours starting the Sunday of the week of our next district to take our robot out of the bag and practice / work on the robot. The rules were a minimum unbagging of 30 minutes each session and a maximum of 8 hours. Practice day (Thursday) load in started at 6pm and was until 9pm. The main field was open for practice at this time. The better part of Friday morning was open practice and opening ceremonies was around 10:30am. Matches ran until 7pm and there were no Friday Awards. Teams got about 1/2 as much time to fix their robots as a regular regional, but also had the 8 hours during the week to make up for it.

I hope it works that way for these compressed regionals.

Paul

But not all compressed regionals will be bag & tag. For example, DC had enough teams in 2009 that matches would need to start on Thursday afternoon to get in 10 qualifiers. Teams will not have access to their robots until Thursday morning when they arrive at the venue.

[Eric O]

Originally Posted by Cory

Instead of starting at noon on Thursday, why not run until 8 pm on Friday as well?

It would require longer hours for the volunteers, but I don't think there is a single team that would rather cut half of practice thursday vs staying later on Friday.

There might be other considerations like OT for venue staff. Maybe FIRST has looked into it and deemed it undo able. It would be nice if it was possible though.

Friday until 8 is tough with "pick list" meetings generally occurring after the event. With the 6pm end time, it allows time for dinner and a pick meeting without making it a late night.

How about 3-7pm on Thursday? It's a nice half a day worth of matches. Most teams can make it through inspection by 3 (if they know they have to in order to play) and it still leaves an hour before pits close to tune things up before Friday. If practice matches started at 8:30, it would leaves 6 hours of practice matches. Using fill lines, if teams want the practice, the opportunity should be there. Plus it guarantees a match list on Thursday night which is an added bonus.

-EOB

[rjmah]

I wonder if they really thought about having both Canadian Regionals as Bag and Tag. I think US teams would still need to ship their robot to those events. I don't think border officials would let any sealed bag cross the border, no matter what kind of paperwork accompanied it.

[smcmahon]

Still very confused about our home Regional (Pittsburgh)...

Bill's Blog/FRC email says this:

FIRST is striving to ensure all FRC Regional Events have a minimum of 10 qualification rounds. Traditional FRC Regional Events may only have a half-day of practice rounds on Thursday before qualification rounds begin. Sacramento and Pittsburgh (which are piloting a new, more time compressed competition format) will allow teams in as early as possible to maximize practice time. Practice matches will be run during load-in at Sacramento and Pittsburgh (probably on the practice field) and qualifying matches will begin sometime Friday morning.

Which leads me to these two questions:

1) It states qualifying will start sometime Friday morning, with practice rounds running during load-in. Is this load-in/practice still going to be Thursday?
2) It also states qualifiers may start mid-day Thursday...? Does this not apply to Pittsburgh/Sacramento?

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by smcmahon

Still very confused about our home Regional (Pittsburgh)...

...


Which leads me to these two questions:

1) It states qualifying will start sometime Friday morning, with practice rounds running during load-in. Is this load-in/practice still going to be Thursday?
2) It also states qualifiers may start mid-day Thursday...? Does this not apply to Pittsburgh/Sacramento?

TRADITIONAL regionals (i.e. not Pittsburgh) may have their qualifications start mid-day Thursday.

Pittsburgh will follow the scenario you listed in item #1. It appears as if people need Bill Miller to answer the question, "When will load-in at Pittsburgh/Sacramento take place?" Thursday night or Friday morning? Has that been answered?