Mythical Six Week Build Season

[Bill Beatty]

Is it time to eliminate the “six week” build season? Think about the tremendous savings of time and money if there was no six-week deadline. A number of folks will say that six weeks is long enough and if you expand the build season you’re going to have more mentor burn out.

Actually, the majority of the leading teams build two robots and continue to develop, improve, and practice throughout the entire FIRST season. That coupled with the withholding allowance and the practice and pit time at the various regional and district competitions allows teams to legally make major changes.

You could eliminate the building of a second robot, which most of the leading teams do. You could continue to practice, debug, and improve the one robot that you take to the competitions. And you can eliminate the “bag and tag” nonsense.

If you want to keep the six week build season, then make it an actual six week limit. Make it illegal to continue to work and practice after the ship/bag date. Otherwise eliminate it completely.

Comments?

[Christopher149]

I need some break in the spring to work on my senior design project, so I want there to still be a limit.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Christopher149

I need some break in the spring to work on my senior design project, so I want there to still be a limit.

Simple, choose to stop working.

Just like you can choose to not work on a practice robot now.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Simple, choose to stop working.

Just like you can choose to not work on a practice robot now.

While you are right, there are a lot of teams where if one or two particular people stop working with the team, then the team takes a serious hit. It's definitely not good for the team to be operating like that, but it is a reality. The decision to let so many people IS still up to you, but it isn't always a simple one.

[Jay O'Donnell]

I think you would find that teams would just look at whatever the best robots are in the first few weeks (254s and 1114s of the world) and start building a whole new robot for later events and championships.

However everything involving money and time spent would be a lot nicer.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

I think you would find that teams would just look at whatever the best robots are in the first few weeks (254s and 1114s of the world) and start building a whole new robot for later events and championships.

I would love to hear the perspectives of FTC and VRC teams on this line of thought. They have an even larger competition window and much more affordable robots, making strategies like this even more feasible.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

I think you would find that teams would just look at whatever the best robots are in the first few weeks (254s and 1114s of the world) and start building a whole new robot for later events and championships.

However everything involving money and time spent would be a lot nicer.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I would love to hear the perspectives of FTC and VRC teams on this line of thought. They have an even larger competition window and much more affordable robots, making strategies like this even more feasible.

This is very common in VRC. By the time we get to VEX Worlds in April, design convergence has usually set in, with 2-3 designs that have been extensively cloned/copied. Some teams really like this, others really don't.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Karthik

This is very common in VRC. By the time we get to VEX Worlds in April, design convergence has usually set in, with 2-3 designs that have been extensively cloned/copied. Some teams really like this, others really don't.

We will see a slight rise in design convergence but not a whole lot more then we already do. Rebuilding an entire FRC robot is a lot of work with or without the bag restraints. Removing the bag restraints isn't going to instantly motivate teams to put in that kind of effort. We see teams rebuild in season every year (we did it, 973 did it, etc).

FRC is a different animal than VRC.

• Less time between first competition and championship
• harder to rebuild/build a robot in that time frame
• more expensive to copy a design
• much, much harder to get it right when you do copy a design
• few teams will just wait for 7 weeks to see what the top week 1 team does

We already saw design convergence with the systems that are easy to modify in many years. It didn't ruin anything.

• 2011 - Minibots
• 2015 - Can Grabbers
• 2012- Bridge Balancing devices (stingers)

[FTC5110]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I would love to hear the perspectives of FTC and VRC teams on this line of thought. They have an even larger competition window and much more affordable robots, making strategies like this even more feasible.

Originally Posted by Karthik

This is very common in VRC. By the time we get to VEX Worlds in April, design convergence has usually set in, with 2-3 designs that have been extensively cloned/copied. Some teams really like this, others really don't.

In VRC it becomes very difficult for teams to design something unique and innovative yet still remain competitive because of the design convergence. Although it's fun seeing a design so good teams attempt to duplicate (sometime almost screw for screw) the downside is having them on the other side of the field and your team loses the match. The single worst part is knowing you'll probably do worse arriving at a competition with something innovative versus just following the convergence crowd.

FTC is a different story because materials are less constrained giving teams more scope to build innovative robots that can't easily be copied without someone doing all the engineering again. You can actually make something different and win. Design concepts do converge somewhat by the FTC world championship but implementation is always different and this often determines match outcomes.

Time limits? Our team participates in both VRC and FTC with the later usually constrained to about 8 weeks of actual build work followed by perhaps 4 weeks of fine tuning. Wouldn't want the season any longer to be honest. VRC being a full 12 month season actually gets boring and we usually have a little fun in the first few months then just sit back and observe trying hard to figure out something innovative that will be a match for the convergence crowd.

[JVN]

I'd be 100% in favor of eliminating "bag day" and shifting to a "kickoff-to-competition" schedule. We'd do less work, be less stressed, and consume less resources while probably providing a better educational experience.

[JB987]

Originally Posted by JVN

I'd be 100% in favor of eliminating "bag day" and shifting to a "kickoff-to-competition" schedule. We'd do less work, be less stressed, and consume less resources while probably providing a better educational experience.

+1!...my opinion and not necessarily a reflection of how all the rest of my fellow advisors feel

[Seth Mallory]

I for one like the stop date. While the students will keep on working it will be at a lower level. No more nights or weekends. The main problem is that the main mentors need the break. By this point families want their members that they loaned to the team back. College work needs to be caught up. Yards and houses that have been ignored need worked on. Prepping for classes and other jobs needs to be done. Winding down and catching up on sleep is a health problem that needs to be addressed. I also miss being home enough to cook some meals.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Seth Mallory

I for one like the stop date. While the students will keep on working it will be at a lower level. No more nights or weekends. The main problem is that the main mentors need the break. By this point families want their members that they loaned to the team back. College work needs to be caught up. Yards and houses that have been ignored need worked on. Prepping for classes and other jobs needs to be done. Winding down and catching up on sleep is a health problem that needs to be addressed. I also miss being home enough to cook some meals.

I have difficulty understanding this point of view. Do you not understand that

A) teams are already meeting after stop build day at a volume similar to build season

B) teams are not obligated to meet at the same volume after build season as they were before build season, and they would be under no other obligation to do that if bag day is eliminated

Or is there another breakdown somewhere?

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I have difficulty understanding this point of view. Do you not understand that

A) teams are already meeting after stop build day at a volume similar to build season

How many teams do this? 5%? 10%? 20%?

There are a lot of teams that quit building on bag day, and they show up to the competition with 6 weeks worth of designed and built robot. It appears that most of them are not on CD during the off season, to comment on threads like this.

I like the 6 week cutoff. This year, our team is going to build two robots and keep going from January to April. Not my decision, but I'll go along and see how it works. We are not meeting as many hours each day, as well.

I understand that FIRST can't really control the whole practice robot thing, so it is really difficult to enforce stop build day.

I kind of like a firm deadline. I even depend on it, for most of my own projects. I can't seem to get anything done unless it needs to be done by such and such a day. Maybe I just use bag day as a crutch...or maybe the limited build time was part of the original idea of FRC...

[waialua359]

I like the stop build day.
I found it odd that some feel it's an advantage for less resource teams to get rid of it. I feel the opposite is true.
More resources will allow the "better" teams to take advantage of what they see and do a quick turnaround before the next subsequent event.

Getting rid of the 6 week build season helps some teams but not the Hawaii and international ones. I dont mind it in VEX because we are doing all of our events locally where we can drive to events, similar to teams in FRC that drive to their events.

I realize that we are in the minority, so I totally get why teams would want to get rid of it. We are very fortunate and have been lucky the past 6 years in being succesful at regionals despite making almost no changes or none at all to our robot that is bagged at the end of the season. In fact, it never comes back home until after championships.
We have also never had the time to ever build a 2nd robot, because we spend most of the time traveling all the time!
For us, it makes no difference doing a week 1 or a week 6 event, our drivers need to be ready because other than the last week of build season to hopefully practice and get drive time, that's it until they do an event, subsequent events, and at Championships.

I always chuckle a little when teams say an event is a work in progress and will be back better at the next one. These events cost $$$$, and for us who have to travel there, a whole lot more $$$$$$$. I try to stress to our team that at each and every event, we need to be prepared the same as the last one we do.

This in my opinion is what makes build season special.