Cheesecake and Pasta

FIRST General Forum
#43

I like Pasta but not Cheesecake.

FIRST has rules around what can be considered COTS and what can’t. It sets the rules for who can sell COTS and who can’t, including rules about availability.
Pasta is fair because everyone (in theory) has access to it. In the most extreme example, a team might buy an entire robot off the shelf. They’d be limited to a per-part cost of $500, so that wouldn’t get much of a robot. There would still be assembly, there would still be troubleshooting, there would still be valuable lessons.

Cheesecake has always rubbed me the wrong way because in the most extreme example, you;d have a team show up to competition with nothing (literally no robot, no kitbot, nothing) be able to walk away with hardware because a robot was gifted to them (here’s a kitbot, here’s a mechanism that fits what we need). In the most extreme example, the team cheesecaking is also sort of saying, “For our 2nd pick in elimination we choose none of the above.” I’m a big fan of teams helping others at competition, I’m less of a fan of teams entering 2 of their robots into elimination.

#44

You bring up an interesting point regarding entering multiple robots into competition. I believe the existence of cheesecake is a result of FIRST HQ holding to their archaic registration price structure.

I guarantee you, the amount of cheesecake would drop precipitously if FRC teams could reasonably enter multiple robots into competitions.

Until then, we’ll continue devoting hundreds of person-hours into our cheesecake solutions each year.

-Mike

#45

Then you must agree that Cheesecake is a way to exploit the rules (i.e. find a loophole), which is not following the spirit of the rule, and seems to be not Graciously Professional.

#46

I do not agree.

Have you met Citrus Circuits’ students and mentors that work hand-in-hand with other teams to execute cheesecake mechanisms? These students and mentors are far more Graciously Professional than I.

Feel free to talk with some of the team’s we’ve had the pleasure of working on cheesecake with over the years. 1323, 5458, 5027, 5012, 3970, 5274, 1662 and 2990 all come to mind, but there are many more. Do some homework.

Just because I want to build more robots doesn’t mean I don’t love cheesecake.

-Mike

#47

I am not going to argue that the registration pricing is perfect, or even reasonably good, but I am curious about the idea of a single team entering multiple bots. Are you saying you wish teams could enter multiple robots at a competition, or even field a bot at two different competitions in the same week?

In terms of registration costs, it would definitely be nice if a team could field another robot without breaking the bank by starting another team, but I would be more concerned with the impact such a system would have on the overall goal of and competitive disparity within FIRST.

On one hand that type of system would definitely cater to high caliber, well funded, and well staffed teams which might make success (and inspiration) for lower level teams even harder to reach.

On the other hand more people from the successful teams (which are arguably better at inspiring students) would be able to participate and possibly make an even greater impact.

Not sure exactly how I feel about this at the moment, but I think it is definitely an interesting discussion to have.

#48

I just want to be clear, is this you saying you would rather throw resources at your own second robot than throw it at someone else’s first, or is there something else here?

#49

I’d love to have 1678A, 1678B, 1678C, etc and get more kids designing and implementing solutions to each year’s FRC challenge.

As it stands right now, we are cost-limited to one 1678 entry into the FRC challenge.

For some perspective, 1678 has over 100 kids. I’d really love to give more of them the opportunity to build, program, operate, and maintain robots each year, rather than planning on contingencies that may or may not happen at a given competition (aka cheesecake development). As an educator, more 1678 robots is clearly better for my students.

So to answer your question directly, yes. Just because I like cheesecake, doesn’t mean I like the financial factors that have led to it’s prominence. I certainly wouldn’t mind if the focus on cheesecake dwindled as more kids got to build more actual robots.

1678 will always be committed to helping any team we can, regardless of how FRC evolves: https://www.citruscircuits.org/outreach.html

-Mike

#50

As much as cheesecake bothers me, multiple entries by a team wouldn’t bother me in the slightest (assuming qualifications and eliminations doesn’t change).
With the example, team XXXXa, XXXXb, and XXXXc robots would all qualify normally and then be subject to the same pick rules, a team that declines an alliance invitation can’t be later picked. Which means that team’s b and c bots are available for any other alliance to pick, instead of being grafted onto an undeserving kitbot and gifted to the team that showed up with nothing.

I hate the rules, I don’t blame teams for playing within the rules.

#51

What, in your opinion, are the pros and cons of having 1678A, 1678B, 1678C over having 1678, 7xxx and 8xxx, where the 7xxx and 8xxx teams are organizations separate from but supported by 1678?

#52

While you may be limited to only entering one team with the number 1678, the financial cost of registration is not so prohibitive that a $200K/year program](https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1691848&postcount=8) could not pay multiple registration fees. If you want to have morethanoneteam, youcanregister multipleteams. Even potentially “rookie” and “veteran” teams.

#53

As Mike stated, they are cost limited now. I could be wrong, but I imagine if 1678 had the capital to do so they would absolutely start new teams.

The pros of a system as proposed:

More kids getting their hands dirty, learning, and becoming a vital part of the team
More chances to explore different ideas and solutions
More students able to experience being a part of the drive team/competition
More for a team of 100+ students to do during the build season
Greater chance to win any event
Ability to attend multiple events in the same week
There are likely many more pros

The cons:
Larger power disparity in FRC(assuming the teams able to do this are, on average, more competitive than other teams)
Dedicating more resources to own team rather than others
Lesser chance for lower tier teams to win

… and those are the only cons I can currently think of.

To me, at least at surface level, and only thinking about the idea of one team fielding multiple bots for a few hours, I think the benefits of a system like this greatly outweigh the drawbacks. I definitely see where Mike is coming from.

#54

One advantage of the A B and C would be that those teams and students would be involved in the whole process, strategy, planning, fabricating, competing with that robot through the season, as opposed one team scabbing something they did all the wink on, onto a receiving teams robot, where the receiving team did none of that. How much receiving teams get from the experience is widely, widely varied as it is now.

#55

I want to be clear that I am not showing up with answers to the questions I am asking. There are plenty of archaic, confusing, or bad things that we have or had in FRC, but removing these things may or may not have complex ramifications. It’s worth thinking about. This random thread in the height of build season is not necessarily the best place to really dig into the most uncomfortable questions that need to be answered in FIRST/FRC, but this one seems relatively innocuous in comparison to others.

#56

We already do the “1678, 7xxx and 8xxx” model, so I can speak to it directly. We started and support three other local FRC teams in Yolo County. All three of these teams are about 15 mins from our shop. They often come to our shop to manufacture parts, assemble their robots, do driver practice, etc. Our students help them with code, mfg, etc when these teams are at our shop.

Pros: More communities have FRC teams! We would have started and supported these teams regardless of if 1678 had multiple robot entries.

Con1: We can only help them out when they are at our shop (we can’t sustainable send our students out of our school district daily to help another school). This doesn’t serve our 100+ kids well enough.

Con2: Supporting other organizations is very tricky work. Our biggest problem is communication. The teams we have helped start often only have one or two mentors and struggle to keep their head above water, let alone communicate their needs effectively. Anyone who has done extensive, long-term, boots-on-the-ground work with FRC rookies can probably relate with this experience.

The 1678A, B, C, etc model.

Pros: More kids build more robots.

Cons: Maybe we need more space at competitions?

Hope that brings some clarity.

-Mike

#57

How are more kids building more robots in the A/B/C scenario? Assume that you don’t pay another dime for fielding an additional robot, how is 1678 magically generating the capital to build more than the three robots you build now? Are they becoming different, independent projects?

#58

Based upon our current priorities, it is outside our budget. I am aware other programs register multiple team numbers, and we considered doing that ourselves this year, but couldn’t quite justify the cost. The option is still on the table for 2019.

They could be different projects or the same project, I don’t know. Maybe we build a simpler robot with a group of students, similar to what 3132 does with their second team. These simpler robots would be cheaper than the amount we currently sink into building three copies of a robot that we hope will be competitive at a high level. I could see this being an option to build more robots while not breaking the bank, no magic required. Think “118 Everybot”.

Side note: There is a lot of “inspiration value” in a student competing with and maintaining a robot. More robot entries means more students can fill roles like drive team and pit team, which is a big advantage to the “multi-team” approaches that Sean referenced.

#59

The value and location for inspiring opportunities can take on many forms, so I won’t say that you will inspire more students if you have 8 drive team slots instead of 4, but you certainly can.

Thanks for letting me pick your brain on this for a bit. I’m just trying to see what you are angling for and don’t want to assume anything one way or the other. I’m been kinda badgering, so you can leave this one alone but: how do you think this would look if it was applied to more teams in your area, your state, nationwide, etc?

#60

And more importantly - how would FIRST have to change to accommodate this change? What What would break in the short term and long term?

#61

Great questions y’all.

I think more teams able to enter two or three robots into an event means more inspired students in more programs. Again, this is based on my premise that students come out of the experience of building, driving, and maintaining a robot more inspired. Many will disagree with this, but what can ya do.

I think part of this transition is FIRST changing their pricing model and finally breaking up Team Registration, Event Registration and KOP into three separate charges (long overdue, IMO).

I think a big pinch-point is event slots, which are already at a premium in places like CA. This seems like one of the largest hurdles with lowering the price-point to enter a team into an event. The event slot market would likely be flooded if the registration price dropped significantly. Maybe this problem takes my dream off the table…

I’m sure there are other significant changes that would need to be made. It’s a big direction-shifting idea.

Again, all of this discussion was predicated on one way to remove the incentives of cheesecaking while still being a net-benefit to teams :slight_smile:

-Mike

#62

Well it’s a good thing we’ve got alumni on the FIRST board of directors to actually help make those kind of bold and complex changes… :rolleyes: