It seems like there’s an increased level of frustration this year with items not being readily available for purchase, whether it be fancy new motors or game pieces. This is not a new thing. If anything the amount of COTS items available has increased and I think vendors are doing a good job of keeping up.
But that’s not the point I want to make. A big part of the challenge of FIRST is to work around these issues. There will always be shortages, whether it’s time, money, materials, manpower, etc.—just like in the real world.
Ask anyone in the water or oil & gas industry about trying to order pumping equipment after Hurricane Harvey (among other shortages of goods that occurred) - lead times were four times longer than normal for some equipment with so much of it needed to repair damage from the natural disaster.
FIRST part shortages are driven by its niche market dynamics and the leap forward into brushless and other new technologies recently, but it does parallel some of the shortages common to industry. Whether from natural disasters, trade wars, or new regulations having to adapt to what is available is a skill that will benefit those who accept it and start practicing it early.
If you want to be on the bleeding edge of FRC and use the latest and greatest motors, fine, I think it’s fair to expect to deal with limited supply.
Game pieces though? That falls under a completely different standard. Not having readily available access to game pieces (and somewhat realistic field elements, for that matter) doesn’t teach anything, it’s just an exercise in frustration and reduces the quality of the program.
This will always be an issue in FRC as long as vendors cannot prepare to have more stock of certain components stocked based on the game challenge. The volatility of what tasks robots must accomplish year to year makes it incredibly hard for vendors to forecast stock needed on hand of non-universal components like bearings, etc. Vendors that specialize in FRC components are still a business, and cannot always have massive amounts of stock of components they may not sell, as that is just bad business.
The COTS revolution has been a great thing that has greatly helped the majority of teams in FRC, but teams need to understand that these kind of hurdles will always exist as long as the components and function of the game are kept secret.
That said, the actual supply of official game components should be something that isn’t as effected by this since the knowledge of the game does not effect this.
A possible idea would be to have a game piece pre-order. Companies allow teams to pay an up front cost of a certain amount for game pieces. The number of game pieces you buy is equal to ~2 times the amount an average robot can hold from the game. All teams would know is the price, not what they are buying or the quantity.
If it’s preordering a fixed amount of game pieces, like they do for international teams, it doesn’t really fix the problem. It moves X number of game pieces from orders to the KoP, but the suppliers will anticipate that and order fewer game pieces overall, resulting in the same shortage, because just doubling the number of game pieces you get isn’t enough for many teams.
Instead, something like what @UnofficialForth suggested - have a supplier work with FIRST on pre-orders of game pieces. Put up some easy to describe options like:
1/4 field worth (12 this year)
1/2 field worth (24 this year)
full field worth (48 this year)
You wouldn’t know how many you’d be getting, nothing would really be given away. You could even throw in some harder to describe options, like:
Experts recommend this for every team (This year, that could be 5 balls)
Experts recommend this for more aggressive cycling practice (This year, that could be 15 balls)
Come up with these categories and apply them to the previous year to get an idea of what it all will mean for the unreleased game and unknown number and type of game piece, and then stick with the descriptions for future years - team’s will get the idea and things will smooth out after a year or two.
Having those pre-orders go out 2-3 months ahead of time would help - instead of just moving a fixed amount of demand (assuming every team says yes to an additional game piece) to a different source, this lets a large portion of the demand fall into pre-orders, with ample lead time to ensure they can be filled - as a bonus, they can actually be boxed and ready to ship before kickoff, and loaded on the truck first thing Monday morning.
Two important dynamics here:
(1) the market is seasonal. 95% of FRC-related purchases happen between December and March. Any stock remaining after that time is likely to sit on the shelves for 8 months. That’s basically putting money on the shelf and just deciding not to use it for 8 months and realizing that, in 8 months, you may have less money on the shelf than you started with. In some cases, that may be a lot less – the 40 gazillion 2017 Fuel Balls that Andymark currently has consuming space basically went to $0.
(2) Secrecy behind the game creates a lot of vendor risk. A part which vendors have developed and stocked up to sell may just not be valuable that year. Thriftybot’s 2" mecanum wheels are a great example – they’re selling out this year, but probably would have sat on the shelf in 2018.
Yellow Balls: We just ordered 6 from Flaghouse, the original manufacturer. They offer a discount on 6 and a 10% coupon on their website so, before shipping, price was about the same as AndyMark’s.