Well we’re 2 hours behind schedule. Had a championship match without any scoreboard, and one alliance never heard or saw the FM’s switch into tele. Many delays between matches while they worked out technical glitches. At one point I thought the kPa was adding to the takeoff score. Interesting day…
But with the 20-30 minutes between matches today, why not take that time to give away one of the team awards? It’ll be 8 by the time this is over.
Just looking to get other people’s thoughts on all that’s happened here today.
Edited to remove comment about awards on Friday, since they were planning on only giving away the two.
Lake Superior ended qualifications 10 minutes ahead of schedule on Saturday.
There were some FMS issues that started on semifinals that caused delays between matches, but those were experienced at most events this weekend and the response by field staff was consistent across events. Presenting awards during those breaks would have only prolonged the delays.
There were never any FMS issues that affected scoring during the Lake Superior regional.
We did award the Woodie Flowers and Volunteer of the Year awards on Friday, which is precisely what we should have awarded and what all regionals will be awarding on Friday.
First of all, incredible job keeping the matches going given the circumstances. The FTA’s in Duluth are second to none and they deserve nothing but praise.
Would it be possible for you to shed light on why the final match on Lake Superior wasn’t replayed? There was an exceptionally long conversation which led to there being no replay.
My account of events based on what I saw and heard: Finals matches 1 and 2 were run with a working live scoring display, field sound, and field lights. Finals match 3 was played with no scoring display, no field sound, and no field lights. The alliances weren’t warned ahead of time that this would be the case. As a result of the lack of field cooperation, one alliance didn’t notice the transition from auton to teleop for 5 seconds into teleop. This would have never happened if the field was working, or even if the teams had been notified that the match would be run the way it was.
The lack of a scoring display put both alliances at a disadvantage in a sense that they couldn’t adjust their strategy based on the live score (something they could do if the field would have worked). Both alliances could have made adjustments if they were warned that they wouldn’t have a working field ahead of time. They could have created a contingency plan, but they weren’t warned to my knowledge.
In my mind (and the minds of the 30+ people I’ve talked to about this call, including many people from the very gracious winning alliance) this was black and white. The field was broken, the teams weren’t told ahead of time about the conditions that they would be playing in, and there should have been a replay.
That is my account based on the information I have available to me. Some very smart and very well trained people talked for 25 minutes and reached a different conclusion. I would be more than happy to have an explanation of the ruling that was made by one of the people involved in the conversations. I’m sure there is some missing piece of information that will clarify things.
The vast majority of that time was spent fixing a mistake we made with getting the backup team entered correctly in the system so that they would get credited correctly.
I wasn’t involved, but I may be able to shed some light. The following is based on the Manual, Section 10.8, and all references to the Manual will go there unless otherwise noted.
The official grounds for a replay is three-fold.
Arena Fault.
Affects the Outcome.
Affected Team Requests.
At least the first two have to be in play, and chances are the third one will be if the first two are.
So, it’s likely that half of the discussion was determining if there WAS an arena fault, and the other half was determining if the outcome was affected. If either one came back with “no”, then by default there’s no replay.
Let’s take a look at the specific complaints noted:
No scoring display. Blue Box C says that a mismatch between the display timer and the official arena timer probably isn’t a fault (that affects the outcome of the match).
No field sound. I think I can stretch Blue Box B (delay in sounds) to cover that as well.
No field lights. This one might be covered by a power failure to a portion of the field (Item B).
No warning that the above would be the case. Well… warning might not have been possible if there was a sudden shutdown.
OK, now, did any of those affect the outcome of the match? Or did they simply affect both alliances equally?
Not an easy call, which is probably why they took so long making it.