paper: Stop the Stop Build

[Sperkowsky]

I really hope you linked this at the end of your survey. If someone from FIRST reads through this we may actually have a chance in getting rid of this.

[jwfoss]

Jim, your 8 hours of unbag every week for every team would be the perfect first step. Thank you for your well thought out analysis.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by jwfoss

Jim, your 8 hours of unbag every week for every team would be the perfect first step. Thank you for your well thought out analysis.

It would indeed. I do feel like the hassle of dealing with bag forms and zip ties is going to cause enough chaos that it won't be long before the bag goes pop though.

[TDav540]

This is basically the ultimate paper regarding anything bag day.

Frank, we know you're there.

[adam the great]

Awesome paper, and love how many points of interest you touched based on with reasonable data points and comparisons. This could be a really good paper to share with many teams that believe that their season is only "6 weeks long"

[Joe Johnson]

Jim,
Really amazing work. Thanks.

I love that you specifically called out that "6 weeks is a myth." It has been a myth for 2 decades.

I also love the data showing that basically a lot of teams are going to suck the first week they compete, whether that's Week 1 or Week 5, they are going to have a bad weekend. And the longer they wait to complete, the badder that weekend is going to get because the rest of the field is making progress (by going to competitions).

The time has come. Let's rip off the band-aide. End Stop Build Day. Let teams keep their robots for the full FIRST Season.

Will some teams build a completely new robot after Week 1? Sure maybe. But really, who cares? A lot of those teams will just put themselves into a deeper hole trying to copy Poofs or Symbotics or Robotnauts or whomever. They won't discover the problems that are not obvious until it's too late. And even if they are successful at knocking off one or two features from another team, I'd rather live in that world than the current world where so many teams bring less than functional robots to their first competition.

Dr. Joe J.

[Brian Selle]

Awesome work. Thanks for putting this together!

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Jim,
Really amazing work. Thanks.

I love that you specifically called out that "6 weeks is a myth." It has been a myth for 2 decades.

I also love the data showing that basically a lot of teams are going to suck the first week they compete, whether that's Week 1 or Week 5, they are going to have a bad weekend. And the longer they wait to complete, the badder that weekend is going to get because the rest of the field is making progress (by going to competitions).

The time has come. Let's rip off the band-aide. End Stop Build Day. Let teams keep their robots for the full FIRST Season.

Will some teams build a completely new robot after Week 1? Sure maybe. But really, who cares? A lot of those teams will just put themselves into a deeper hole trying to copy Poofs or Symbotics or Robotnauts or whomever. They won't discover the problems that are not obvious until it's too late. And even if they are successful at knocking off one or two features from another team, I'd rather live in that world than the current world where so many teams bring less than functional robots to their first competition.

Dr. Joe J.

My my attitudes have changed...

https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...5&postcount=34

[FrankJ]

Originally Posted by marshall

My my attitudes have changed...

https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...5&postcount=34

If you are thinking Joe's attitude has changed... I don't know. I am not Joe.

I think the general idea of building a support robot for one of the elite teams. (Or having the elite team provide you a support bot to take to an event) is problematic. Not having a bag day will still make it problematic only more so.

No disrespect intended for 900 or the others involved in the topic of Joe's post.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by FrankJ

If you are thinking Joe's attitude has changed... I don't know. I am not Joe.

I think the general idea of building a support robot for one of the elite teams. (Or having the elite team provide you a support bot to take to an event) is problematic. Not having a bag day will still make it problematic only more so.

No disrespect intended for 900 or the others involved in the topic of Joe's post.

I suppose that's the issue I'm getting at. Removing stop build in fact opens up new possibilities for teams to collaborate both at an event and prior to an event starting. Just a thought.

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by marshall

My my attitudes have changed...

https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...5&postcount=34

I am not seeing the disconnect that others see. I believe that I can be FOR removing the stop build rules and still be AGAINST having the top teams cheesecake the soul out of a lower tier team.

I have a yardstick. It has inspiration tick marks along its length. I take the controversial position that it is more inspirational to have a team compete with a working robot of their own creation that can accomplish a game objective they set out to achieve.

I don't like excessive cheesecaking because I believe it has bad long term effects on inspiration. I don't like stop build rules because they significantly disadvantage teams with low resources and while wasting resources of high resource teams, both of which adversely affect the inspirational impact of FIRST.

You can disagree with my views but I don't understand how they are incompatible views to have.

What am I missing?

Dr. Joe J.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

I am not seeing the disconnect that others see. I believe that I can be FOR removing the stop build rules and still be AGAINST having the top teams cheesecake the soul out of a lower tier team.

I have a yardstick. It has inspiration tick marks along its length. I take the controversial position that it is more inspirational to have a team compete with a working robot of their own creation that can accomplish a game objective they set out to achieve.

I don't like excessive cheesecaking because I believe it has bad long term effects on inspiration. I don't like stop build rules because they significantly disadvantage teams with low resources and while wasting resources of high resource teams, both of which adversely affect the inspirational impact of FIRST.

You can disagree with my views but I don't understand how they are incompatible views to have.

What am I missing?

Dr. Joe J.

I think it comes down to a very fundamental difference. You see it as a top tier team taking advantage of a lower tier team. I don't. I see it as two teams collaborating on a set of goals and a common design.

One of the reasons being given, even by myself, is that ending stop build will allow top tier teams to better assist lower tier teams prior to events. What's to stop them from collaborating on alliance strategies or a better design? How is that different than doing it at an event? What if you bring your robot into our shop and we machine parts for you? What if we come up with a plan that is practically unbeatable and have a plan to transform one of our two robots for eliminations?

To me, these ideas are very much related. But hey, as a wise man once said, you don't have to take my word for it.

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by marshall

I think it comes down to a very fundamental difference that I see. You see it as a top tier team taking advantage of a lower tier team. I don't. I see it as two teams collaborating on a set of goals and a common design.

One of the reasons being given, even by myself, is that ending stop build will allow top tier teams to better assist lower tier teams prior to events. What's to stop them from collaborating on alliance strategies or a better design? How is that different than doing it at an event? What if you bring your robot into our shop and we machine parts for you? What if we come up with a plan that is practically unbeatable and have a plan to transform one of our two robots for eliminations?

To me, these ideas are very much related. But hey, as a wise man once said, you don't have to take my word for it.

To me the idea of helping another team is completely okay. Help away. But suppose that Team A helped Team B before an upcoming competition but Team B could only use the improvements IF they were on alliances that included Team A. Doesn't seem right. Also, before a competition, Team B seems to be in the driver's seat. They can accept the changes or not. It is up to them. But once an alliance is formed, Team B is under much more pressure to accept the cheesecake proposals of their alliance captain whether they like them or not.

I know, I know, Zebracorns feel that they were not taken advantage of. I hear you. And I don't care. Well that is too strong of a statement. I care, in fact, I am happy for Team 900. It was a good experience for you. But I STILL think that such excessive cheesecaking was bad for the sport. The typical team in the future will not have a great experience having their hard work (for 6 weeks ;-) being pushed to the side so that a top team can cheesecake the snot out of them.

Dr. Joe J.

[Tim Sharp]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

excessive cheesecaking was bad for the sport. The typical team in the future will not have a great experience having their hard work (for 6 weeks ;-) being pushed to the side so that a top team can cheesecake the snot out of them.

Dr. Joe J.

I agree. One of the strongest motivational factors that sustains a team (IMO) is the sense of ownership the students have in their machine. Win or lose, being able to watch your robot on the field and knowing that part of it exists due to your hard work and effort is a powerful thing.

[Joe G.]

Originally Posted by Tim Sharp

I agree. One of the strongest motivational factors that sustains a team (IMO) is the sense of ownership the students have in their machine. Win or lose, being able to watch your robot on the field and knowing that part of it exists due to your hard work and effort is a powerful thing.

Completely agreed. And it is interesting to bring up cheesecake in the context of the bag discussion, because of a hypothetical scenario that has been bothering me for a while.

Most years, "cheesecaking" consists of relatively minor, relatively low tech additions dreamed up on the spot, in a collaborative effort between teams. Alliances are largely selected on the base competency of the robot a team showed up at the event with, and cheesecake provides minor enhancements. In 2015, we had a game uniquely suited to cheesecaking, largely because of just how completely the vital canburgling task could be completed via a self-contained, sub 30 pound mechanism, developed and brought in entirely by another team, and how few less than elite teams put any effort whatsoever into this task, or developed systems with a prayer of being competitive at it. As a result, we started to see some teams picked more on their willingness to abandon elements of the robot they brought in. And at the end of the season, cheesecake and its possibilities being in people's minds lead to us seeing a new robot built from the ground up at an event, based largely on design work done by another team prior to the event.

The debates over whether or not this was a positive thing have been beaten to death. But one indisputible fact about the experience remains: the harpoon build was a monumentally difficult feat for all teams involved. It required an unprecedented level of coordination, pre-planning, and engineering skill. We've only seen it once, and I don't know that we'll ever see anything quite like it again. If we do, it'll be hard not to be in awe of the teams that pull it off, and the amazing accomplishment will once again overshadow any sourness about the ethics of attempting it. One can say similar things about teams that manage to pull off mid-season full-bot rebuilds under the bag system, and arguments about design convergence.

However, the difficulty of this feat was almost 100% artificially generated, through the bag rules and withholding rules. Getting rid of bag and tag would presumably also erase poundage limits on fabricated items that a team can bring to competition with them.

Which brings up the logical questions: What stops teams, many of whom are already building multiple robots, from bringing in pre-built "Cake-bots," ready to roll as-is with different team numbers slapped on (or Cake-tops that can bolt on top of a kitbot, if FIRST adopts VRC-style definition of a robot)? Would the hypothetical gains in performance of the average team be enough to erase an elite team's motivation to do this? Would the sense of collaboration and involvement by all teams so often quoted regarding past extreme cheesecake endeavours always be maintained? Would we want to stop this at all, or would it be a positive thing to a degree?

EDIT: To be clear, I don't anticipate this ever becoming a widespread thing, nor do I mean to suggest that certain teams are ready and waiting to do this, only held back by the current ruleset. But the door does open up if we aren't careful.