1902 through quals and elims match 1 of Orlando:
1902 through the rest of elims in Orlando:
Before we selected 1902 we went to them and asked if they would be willing to remove their elevator and add ballast. We received confirmation they would from both their lead mechanical student and mentor in the pit (it is important to get both because sometimes the adult you talk to will say yes then you get upset students who have no idea there robot is about to get a brutal haircut, or sometimes you get enthusiastic students who just want to get picked and mentors will say they can’t/don’t want to due to something in that system being way more complicated to reattach/make work for their event that starts the following week).
We went to several teams asking them how much they weighed, would they be willing to add ballast or remove components, or ziptie something to no longer move. Some people were like 1902 and were 100% whatever we asked. Some were ok with adding ballast but not removing components, and others were not ok modifying at all. We didn’t try to sway anyone from their choices and we adjusted our picklist based on the robots that those teams were willing to field.
For the stuff OP specifically listed (Securing airtanks, loose chain in the drivetrain) these are done during our evaluation of everyone on our list before elims. We will ask them to secure this stuff during a quals match so we can make sure they can do it right, or so we can get feedback on why something is loose. Also if someone has a loose chain in their drivetrain and no issues have happened from it yet 9 out of 10 times I would leave it alone.
After a selection is done we do a deeper dive into the alliance partner and we have never gotten any pushback or people upset at us for either re-routing wiring (you can see 1902’s radio was on their elevator so that needed to be moved) or just using a liberal amount of hot glue on their electronics. It is about 50/50 on us asking for this or doing it ourselves and it has always been up to the team in question who does it. We have also had teams ask us to help them revert their changes after elims and so long as the venue is not upset (we are always done well before the field is done being broken down) we will accommodate.
Now @stefano_r you do not list what team you are on or what event this took place at or the team in question and that is fine, but I do have to ask was the team you asked to modify actually “fine”? If nothing happened relating to the things you wanted them to fix then they were right that everything was fine, but if something did happen then I am interested if a similar thing happened in a quals match or not.
Similar thing happened during practice day in Orlando with us. There was a team seated fieldside that started saying much worse things about my team. I was down on the field not in anything that signified my team affiliation because I was recording stuff for First Updates Now. During one of these matches the mentor acting as the media badge holder came and sat next to me to watch a match we were not in. The back of his shirt has a giant logo of our team you can not mistake him for being on any other team. The team sitting field side still was saying and wishing horrible things on my team. A little later one of our alumni who was attending the event came and sat right next to said team, he was wearing a hoodie once again with a big logo on the back, and on the arm is SWAMPTHING in big red letters. Still same team saying horrible things.
To quote one of our seniors who heard this same thing while grabbing lunch:
As opposed to getting placed on a DNP list until we saw a shift in attitude (The typical thing that happens when teams make bad impressions repeatedly at an event) the vote from the students was to leave them on the list and potentially pick them and change their attitudes about us however when we broke down the pick list this team fell just outside of our evaluation list so they did not make it into elims.
