FRC Blogged - Share your FIRST Story, and *Preliminary* Championship Match Schedules

[PayneTrain]

Scout team, assemble! preliminarily

[Akash Rastogi]

Nice, sounds like these match schedules are permanent and here to stay! Nope, no possible changes can be made to these here schedules whatsoever.

/sarcasm

This is cool though, I know a lot of students and mentors who are going to lose sleep over this.

I am concerned about the number of matches though...

[zachmartin1806]

Anybody else wondering what motivated them to release a (preliminary) match schedule? Like he said in the post there are a lot of things different about this year and this is the only one that surprises me. Although I am kind of glad to see that our first match is with 1114 (preliminary that is)

[MechEng83]

My preliminary reaction is: 1 practice match and only 8 qualification matches? We only get to play 40% of the field during quals...

Last year they gave us 9 qualification matches with the same number of teams in each division.

[Karthik]

First off, let me state how absolutely awesome it is that the FRC staff released this preliminary schedule. This is a huge step. But now to the negative...

8 qualifying matches per team is simply unacceptable. FIRST has made huge strides over the past few years to get teams as many qualification matches as possible. This is a huge step backwards. Hopefully these schedules are preliminary and they find a way to squeeze in at least one extra match. I know there are many factors at play when it comes to scheduling, so I recognize there's no easy solution. But I also know that 8 matches in divisions of 99 teams, at a Championship level, is just not enough.

[Patrick Flynn]

In case anyone wants them in an excel format here's a link to all the matches* in a Google doc, Please don't edit this document if you want to edit it make a copy, or download it to excel

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...Wc&usp=sharing

*Practice matches not included

[pathew100]

Last year the cycle times between matches was *fast*. They could fit in more matches.

This year it is slower due to counting discs and belaying robots.

[CalTran]

Here's a word cloud of the blog. It's interesting to see what words are used often and not used often.

8 matches should be interesting, and I dearly hope that that's the preliminary part of this schedule, and that they're trying desperately to fit in more matches. Even though my team isn't competing, I understand the stress it puts on a team to only have 8 matches to prove their worth, and how much every disc in autonomous will have to strike fast and hard. Floor pick ups can't afford to miss a disc in their 5-7-9 runs.

[IndySam]

I always figured they could fit 9 matches into the schedule. I really don't understand why there is only 8.

I am a bit torn however because this current schedule is favorable to us.

[kwotremb]

Originally Posted by Patrick Flynn

In case anyone wants them in an excel format here's a link to all the matches* in a Google doc, Please don't edit this document if you want to edit it make a copy, or download it to excel

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...Wc&usp=sharing

*Practice matches not included

Now who is going to link this to Max or Avg OPR and get everyones ranking. Could even link in Auto OPR to get seeding right. Screw you work, not enough time to do this.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Karthik

First off, let me state how absolutely awesome it is that the FRC staff released this preliminary schedule. This is a huge step. But now to the negative...

8 qualifying matches per team is simply unacceptable. FIRST has made huge strides over the past few years to get teams as many qualification matches as possible. This is a huge step backwards. Hopefully these schedules are preliminary and they find a way to squeeze in at least one extra match. I know there are many factors at play when it comes to scheduling, so I recognize there's no easy solution. But I also know that 8 matches in divisions of 99 teams, at a Championship level, is just not enough.

Qualification matches are schedule to end at 10:30. Could they squeeze in one more set and run up to noon?

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Qualification matches are schedule to end at 10:30. Could they squeeze in one more set and run up to noon?

The spectator schedule has alliance selections from 10:30-11, break for "an hour" then division matches go from 12-2:30 (of COURSE they will...).

What's really causing this is the equal team count of last year while adding a minute to the cycle time. Sounds silly, but that's over 2 hours of dead time you didn't get last year.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Qualification matches are schedule to end at 10:30. Could they squeeze in one more set and run up to noon?

The average cycle time in the schedule is approximately 7:32. Without adding any extra time to the schedule, they would need to turn 6:46 cycles to get an extra match in. Adding an extra 30 minutes to the schedule would mean you could get 9 matches by running a 7:00 cycle.

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by Karthik

The average cycle time in the schedule is approximately 7:32.

I get 7:09 (you may have played through the dinner break on Thursday), so that would mean 6:23 cycles in your scheme (and no breathing room for handling unanticipated problems).

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

I get 7:09 (you may have played through the dinner break on Thursday), so that would mean 6:23 cycles in your scheme (and no breathing room for handling unanticipated problems).

I got 7 hours of play on Thursday, 2:20 on Friday morning, 5:15 on Friday afternoon, and 2:15 on Saturday morning. That's 16:50 total, meaning 1010 minutes. Dividing this by 134 matches gives 7.53 minute cycle times, which is approximately 7:32. Did I make a counting error?