Team Update #1

[ahollenbach]

I'd like to remind everyone that they are on their FIRST robotics teams for a reason. And yes, while you are entitled to your opinion, respectfully keep it to yourself or a very small group of your peers, rather than making yourself sound like a fool on a forum that the GDC will not listen to.
The two major issues people have been having:
60" -> 84"
If you are so hell-bent on having this wonderful engineering challenge, then have it! Anyone who disagrees with the expansion of the cylinder parameters, I have personally changed the rules, so only your teams must be inside a 60" diameter. Problem solved
P.S. A lot of you are contradicting yourselves - you are angry that the minibot is being stripped of its creativity, but expanding the cylinder expands options, thus enabling creativity.
Which brings us to the next big issue:
The MINIBOT
Yes, the parts are expensive, and *maybe* they are limiting your creativity, but who cares? I think the suspense will make it worth it...And as we saw in kick-off, a minibot can easily make it up in ~7 seconds. So whoever has been estimating 14 and 16 seconds for these things...well I don't know what you had planned, but hopefully you go back to the drawing board. As for those who want the engineering challenge - many have previously mentioned, the challenge is designing a minibot that can go on any robot with barely any modifications.

Remember, you are doing FRC (and posting on this forum) because you like your FIRST robotics team. Some of you are beginning to sound more like trolls than engineers

[Manoel]

Originally Posted by ahollenbach

As for those who want the engineering challenge

Originally Posted by StevenB

If that's your line of thinking, then please consider the MINIBOT restrictions as the kind of engineering challenge you wanted.

Engineering still can't beat Physics! There's only some much weight to remove from the minibot, so it may eventually come down to, as someone pointed out, to whoever has the fullest battery or, completely ridiculous, who got lucky and received the slightly better spec'ed motor from the assembly line...

As for the fun of watching one robot beat the other by milliseconds, maybe I'm just weird, but the kick I get from 100m dashes is watching Usain Bolt crush records, not the other seven "regular" guys who all arrive at the same time - by the way, there's no photofinish at a (incredibly long and slow) marathon...

[mathking]

[quote]As for the fun of watching one robot beat the other by milliseconds, maybe I'm just weird, but the kick I get from 100m dashes is watching Usain Bolt crush records, not the other seven "regular" guys who all arrive at the same time - by the way, there's no photofinish at a (incredibly long and slow) marathon...[/quote/
As a track and cross-country coach, I have seen some long races change in the last second. I see the difference between launching and climbing with motors more like the difference between the 100 meter dash and the 4x400 meter relay, or the 1500 meter run.

More seriously, why is it more exciting to see which hostbot is a tiny fraction of a second faster at deploying the minibot and triggering a launcher?