Balls bouncing out of goal

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Norris

I feel that FIRST could have done a much better job with this, (yes its a design challenge and all..). But I feel that the chains should be replaced with a mesh type material, I saw a practice scrimmage which used this and worked beautifully. I haven't seen the game in person yet, But from all the video shots and web casts that I have watched there are a good percentage of the balls bouncing out. It is already tough enough to score in the center with all the defense being played, and having 30+% of your balls bounce out just makes it that much unnecessarily harder. I hope FIRST deals with this problem before there are too many people complaining.

Alternately, perhaps a whole bunch of people might hold off on complaining until they actually go back, read the rules, re-examine the field drawings, build a goal, build a robot, practice the shots, and understand that this has been a part of the whole challenge since the very day that the game was announced. Nothing has changed, nothing is different. Perhaps those that are just chomping at the bit to complain might realize that a whole lot of teams figured out that controlling backspin, controlling the azimuth angle of the shot, and controlling the elevation of the shot are all factors in minimizing the probability of the ball bouncing back out, and they were able to do something about it. This is not an issue that FIRST has created, it is something that a few teams failed to recognize as part of the problem. So perhaps those that are so eager to complain might realize that if they spent a little less time complaining and a little more time analyzing the problem and developing solutions, then they might have a little less to complain about.

-dave