So It’s the final match of the regional you are attending, and your team going to nationals depends on winning this match. One of your alliance partners (team A) is already headed to Nationals, and the other team on your alliance (B) needs this win to go just like you do.
The last 30 seconds come around, but the score is 2 points in the opposing alliance’s favor. The opposing alliance’s ramp bot suffers a pneumatic failure, and can’t lift their bots at all. 20 second left. You’re jumping for joy, and you start screaming at your alliance partners to head back and get on your lift… Team B loads up fine, but team A refuses to come back. At 10 seconds team A starts to come back, and get halfway on your lift… when for whatever reason, they get stuck. Their robot is located such that if you engage the lift; it will probably catapult their bot into the air, causing them to land on their arm/manipulator and ruining it beyond what can be fixed during a fix-it window***.*** If you don’t raise the lift… you lose the regional, and both you and team B can’t go to Nationals.
wow, what a situation, im pretty shure that alliance b would have yelled at you to delpoy the ramp and in all fairness, it was a two to one vote. plus, fixing it in the end would be fun! 3 teams working on a robot is much better then one.
deploy it! We don’t build robots for them to look pretty. I am pretty sure that the other team would like to get a gold too. Granted that’s not what all this is about, but still, they have the whole practice day of the nationals.
Well, let me put it to you this way. We are going to Atlanta for the first time ever and I know for a fact that we would go for the win. As Paul, one of our “lifelong” mentors on 1504 has said in the past, we go out to win every match. You take the chance and worry about the consequences later. Team A probably wants to win the regional too!
A fall from a ramp deploying probably wouldn’t total a robot (not one that could make it to finals anyway,) but if the situation were to arise, I would say deploy. If you don’t deploy, two teams lose out. If you do, odds are you can fix the robot, at least to a point that it can compete in Atlanta. Even if it doesn’t regain full capabilities, championships is a great experience regardless of your performance.
lift, no question in my mind. the team will have some time at the regional before they go into the crate and all day thursday at the championships to fix/ build another arm. There are multiple examples of teams building robots in 1 day due to shipping mishap so I am sure that with the support of all the teams at the championship they will have no problems fixing the robot.
I think I gave to much background in the scenario… If you are in the heat of the moment… you probably will only be thinking “Crap, they aren’t on… I hope the lift still works” as you flip the switch. Or at least, that is what I would do.`1
My original situation was supposed to be that you couldn’t fix the robot in the amount of time given at all… not even a little bit. But now that I think about, with three teams working together, you could probably build a brand new robot in a short amount of time. I guess thats just part of FIRST
ok here is how it works on my team. Im a nice guy. Im smart, good looking, a sharp dresser, kind, and most of all modest. but when Im out on the field as a coach most of those go away(I still like to think Im nice). I will tell my drive team to do what it takes to pull off a win(with in GP), or atleast a good finish. The rest of the team knows that at the end of any match they may have to rebuild a robot.
so as far as this is concerned I would not hesitate to tell my driver to lift the ramp, while at the same time tell the coach of the other team that were going to win this and by the time you get the robot back to the pit there will be at least 10 pairs of hands to fix anything thats broke, we will even help you fix it at nationals if it comes to that(btw there is nothing that you cant fix in a fix it window with enough PVC and a heat gun).
edit. P.S. this may seem a little more cutthroat than I am. the line I draw on GP is would I think it was right if a robot did that to my robot so no pinning or destructive defensive play.
With that scenario, I would not be able to consider whether or not the robot would likely get damaged. Being damaged is one of the risks of the lift sadly, by trying to get up the design the other team took that risk on willingly, so I would lift the ramp and hope for the best, and of course with anything in FIRST a finish like that would lead to too many people willing to help fix it.
I would probably deploy the ramp. Everyone on your alliance would want to win the regional no matter what. With 3 teams, I’m sure you could fix whatever broke.
I would deploy it, especially since being on the field in the heat of the moment you probably wouldn’t be able to tell for sure what was going to happen. If it did catapult them I would do everything I could to help them fix it, not only before they shipped it to Nat’s, but at Nat’s. Still I hope no one’s lifter is capable of catapulting a robot.
Seriously, lift it, and see if you can work together to fix it. Any team can plot out tasks needed to be done in a reasonable pair of fix-it windows to appropriately make the spare parts. Then there’s the time at the competition that can be spent with attaching/etc. It would make a great headline if the alliance teams helped re-assemble the bot at the Championship event
