So much for the "last’ team update.
Summary:
- Determining how Festival of Champions teams are decided.
- I hope you liked overly complex charts, because that’s how we decide FOC teams.
- You have to not change your robot after Einstein, sadly.
#OneChamp. I hope the inaugural Festival of Champions is a good one.
In figure 10-5, it says the winner can invite a team from the 3rd place alliance. Does this mean we have 3rd/4th place matches at champs now?
Wow, no bagging! But no changes of any kind at any time either.
Maybe 3rd seed alliance?
Einstein teams are ranked by the round robin, right? So I’m assuming that’s the ranking they are referring to.
With six divisions at each Championship, the first stage of Einstein is done via Round Robin. The 3rd-6th rankings are determined by alliances’ finishes in the Round Robin.
Ah, I see, I haven’t been up to date with this stuff. Thanks for clarifying.
So the whole Festival of Champions is (likely) just 5 matches at most? That seems kind of odd for an event where it will probably take more time to set up the field than to play on it.
If a Regional is a Regional,
and a Championship is a Super Regional,
then the Festival of Champions is the…
Superduper Regional.
I don’t think the chart is overly complex for what they’re trying to get across. Ideally, everyone comes. If not, let’s keep it reasonably balanced–second picks for second picks, third picks for third picks, and no handpicking replacements. (Let’s be real, without these rules there’s a fair chance someone would eventually put the pressure on their fourth alliance member to step aside for a god-tier alliance captain further down in the finishing order. Not saying it would happen every time, but you can imagine it.)
I also don’t think they’re out of line with their robot rules, either. The last thing we need is to have these eight teams burning themselves out for three months coming up with more and more iterations just to knock off the other alliance.
Frankly, there was a part of me wondering if they were going to go really left field for FoC. Some real Chairman Kaga stuff like “Here’s $15,000 from a sponsor, go build two more robots and the eight teams that qualify will spawn eight three-robot alliances.” It’s nuts, and probably about as bad for team burnout as what would happen without the rules just introduced, but wouldn’t that be a story to tell!
I think it’s just passing the buck down the line. An alliance with the means to pull it off could spend their resources building clones of the opposing alliance to practice against. Especially so if they are from the same geographic region -
being able to travel to your partner’s practice field more than once makes this significantly more advantageous.
I don’t dispute that this is possible. And if you had, say, an all NorCal or all Michigan alliance then heck yeah they’re going to hang out a lot this summer. And if you’re going to do that, then heck yeah let’s clone the other alliance.
But how precisely do you need to clone (or even can you clone)? Do they need to be west-coast drives just how the Poofs or whoever made it, or would an AM14U* or Versaframe setup geared about the same do the job? Do they need to climb, which you can’t interfere with? Do they need full-spec roboRIO* control systems, or does a HERO* or Cheap and Dirty radio* work?
It may not even require building a full robot–I’m sure most of the teams on this level have some friend teams that they could call and say “Hey, would you come spar with us? We need someone to run like XXXX does and you’re about as fast.” I know I’d take that call!
*Full disclosure, I work at AndyMark and we sell these things.
Alliances with teams from nearby locations have happened recently at Einstein finals. Last years finalists were 2056 (Ontario, Canada), 1690 (Israel (the odd ones out)), 3015 (Rochester, NY), and 1405 (Rochester, NY).
I imagine that the 5 matches will all have a fair amount of speeches and other hoopla between them, making the event a couple hours long. But, yes, considering all the resources being poured into the event, including team travel & lodging, volunteer travel & lodging, volunteer setup hours, etc, I don’t think it is really worth it.
We’ll get to find out who the real winner is. But, at what price?
Keep in mind there will also be an FTC tournament and some sort of event involving the Chairman’s/Inspire winners.
So, given that FIRST deems two Championship events as a necessity*, how would you solve it? If you win Houston, can you get your team out of school (and work, for the mentors) on sub-week notice for a trip to St. Louis (with all the flights, buses, hotels, and such) to settle it there?
*I don’t really want to debate that part here–plenty of threads for that.