New England District event thoughts and appreciations

Competition District Events
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6933 (Archytas) here. What a ride!

Mostly rookie team members, solid offensive robot, albeit on mecanum roller skates. Scored a lot, got everything from great matchups to bad bounces. Ended up drafted into 4th alliance, swept quarterfinals with 100+ point games, then ended the season playing in the semi-finals against a #1 alliance that is very, very difficult to outscore (150? Yikes.) Our message to small teams with limited money and resources: You can do it! Simple designs, build for reliability, lean heavily on (free) software, get lots of practice, don’t get overambitious. Skipping traversal was the best decision our team made.

Detroit champs event is missed.

So many top New England teams declined the invitation to Houston that we got an invitation! And also had to decline. We can reasonably drive the team to Detroit from Vermont. Houston, not so much. We’ll probably send a couple team members and a mentor to scout and research. If the neighboring Vermont Technical College is really ready to give us occasional access to their new multi-million-dollar maker shop, we could be ready to go to the next level from good robots to great robots.

Dirt floor is suboptimal.

Volunteers all deserve medals for digging trenches and hammering hundreds of 8-inch spikes through plywood to try to keep it level. I was panicked that uneven floor would wreak havok with mecanum wheels (heading stabilization PID can only do so much.) Field was surprisingly playable.

Separate buildings for pits and fields is suboptimal

Especially when the walkway between them is outdoors. In the rain. Water game confirmed!

Competition was incredibly tight.

So many close games. To every team that struggled: Check your scouting numbers again. We were happy with the team and robot performance, but had soooo many close calls. Just one more alliance ball bounces and stays in the high goal, the climb starts half a second earlier and can let go of the mid bar, etc. We ran the numbers, disregarded the blowouts in both directions and counted just the close calls. We left literally 14 ranking points on the field; the difference between 22nd place and 6th place. All by a hair’s breadth.

And the extended quarterfinal match between the 3rd seed and the 6th seed was epic. Practically tied every game. Everyone was on the edge of their seats.

We owe other teams many appreciations:

2370 (iBots) saved our season with an invitation to their shop to scrimmage and troubleshoot, and lend us some key parts. Out bot arrived at their shop with many question marks and left their shop a winner.

5687 (Outliers) Thanks for believing in us with the second draft pick! I checked the scouting numbers, and during qualifying, only 5 other bots at the event outscored us on the high goal, so I guess the scouting worked. That 122-point quarterfinal game was awesome.

1768 (Nashoba) Thanks for picking up the slack in game 2; the defense was all over us and our roller skates and shut us down completely. No problem; Outliers/Nashoba were left alone to light it up and scored 115 points. Solid. I hope we made an acceptable defense magnet. Too bad the Corsairs didn’t spend more time beating us up and leaving you guys alone in the semis! Speaking of whom…

5846 (Corsairs) In the Revere event, we drafted this team SPECIFICALLY so we wouldn’t have to play against them in the next round; that is, after getting obliterated by them during qualifying when they allowed us to score approximately zero points. A solid shooter/climber, sure, but an absolute monster on defense, great driving and disciplined commitment to playing defense in the New England playoffs, to the point of even grabbing two opponent cargo and pushing the rest into the corners during the pre-finals PRACTICE driving session with NO opponent robots even on the field! A real highlight-reel moment. Sometimes defense really does win championships. You guys deserve it. I reminded our team that our 122-point game was higher than the winning score in the finals. 5846 had a lot to do with that, changing the tempo of the whole match.

614 (Night Hawks)

That passive climber arm add-on to a mid-bar climber was genius. Thanks for sharing it here. We also managed to squeeze a similar design to our single-arm climber by making a forked lever. It’s an idea so good we wish we had thought of it. Here’s ours in action: https://www.instagram.com/p/CcVM-h3lTYB/

7153 (Aetos Dios)

Another young team with a chip on their shoulder. Strategy masters laser-focused on ranking points. Great pit neighbors. Many of their team members contributed to 6933 team member Danny Smith’s outstanding digital scouting system in exchange for access to the data, which is a huge help.

95 (Grasshoppers)

We have to give a shout out to our Vermont neighbors. Great season! We’ll look forward to meeting up for some post-season gatherings of VT teams.

Chief Delphi

The technical and build support/discussions here are fantastic. There are too many individuals to thank. Even though it sometimes gets hot in here, just like any social media platform, the level of expertise is off the charts. An indispensable resource.

Did I just see that?

Am I imagining things, or did I just watch a district championship event where the winning team, the #1 seeded alliance captain, had no swerve drive, no vision targeting system, and as a “fender-bot” could only shoot from four spots on the field? I’m going to just say “238” at every team meeting from now on when any team member talks about things you HAVE to have on your robot to be competitive.

That said, we still probably work on a swerve drive this off-season, because it looks fun. And it’s educational, which is the whole point.

Congrats again to all the teams who participated this weekend, and I hope everyone had fun and learned a lot from the experience!

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Field Repair at the NEDCMP Calcium field.

When we found out that what was expected to be a “hard surface” amounted to a “compacted” horse arena surface…
There was a scramble to obtain enough plywood (in short supply, supply chain etc…) and could only get enough 3/8" plywood to cover the surface for two fields.

Overnight, the warping got even worse, which necessitated another trip to Home Depot for the drills and spikes.

Sam, who you see at the start of the video, was the hero at the NEDCMP.
He and his crew were out there between every other match, cutting the carpet and folding it back, securing the plywood as best they could, and using Gaffers tape to seal up the scars. You can see evidence of how often this was done after the halfway point in the video.

Needless to say, no one wanted the field carpet after the event.

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Glad to be a bit of inspiration. We certainly would have built a more complicated robot if we thought we could have pulled it off. It helped a little to have some of the top teams missing, but we can only play against the folks that show up and we’re ecstatic with the win.

Those more complicated things like turrets and swerve definitely help, but we’re big fans of practice and iteration. With a smallish team a little light on experience this year, our initial aim was for a complete robot at Week 0 that would be an effective single wheel shooter with a mid bar climb. We missed on the climb part as we decided to outsource that system by using one of the COTS telescope climbers and it didn’t arrive on time, but were excited about how the rest of the robot performed. After seeing the game play out at Week 0 and Week 1, we felt we needed to push for the traverse climber and that was added in time for Week 3 and refined for Week 5. The final tweak was the back shooter wheels to get rid of the backspin and eliminate virtually all bounceouts. And as the season went along our driver and operator just got better and better while we continued to use extensive scouting and strategy to put ourselves and our alliance partners in the best position to succeed.

I’ll piggy back on your shoutout to the volunteer crew from this weekend. Top to bottom our volunteer experience was phenomenal and we could see how hard everyone was working to keep the floor playable.

To all our Qualification Alliance Partners:
There’s not a single RP we could have earned without you. When we looked at our schedule we certainly did not think there was any chance we would seed 1. It took a little bit of luck and a lot of help from all of you to make that happen.

176 Ace’s High
We knew as soon as we seeded first who we were hoping to play with. We are very grateful you all decided to accept. Hopefully it feels like we pulled our weight by soaking up the defense leaving your amazing machine free to score boatloads of points! We obviously could not have made the run we did without you. You were a pleasure to work with and we would be happy to play together again any time.

5846
Literally the best defender we’ve ever played with. You all were beasts on the field, communicative in the driver station and receptive to our suggestions between matches without being doormats. It’s no coincidence no alliance topped 100 points against us, that’s all you! You kept the opponent’s scores in a range that we felt like we could consistently top and it worked out perfectly. We’re very glad you all were able to work out the minor issues that cropped up with your swerve module early on and code a little later.

This weekend was an incredible end to our regular season. We hope to see many of you all around at offseasons. Who knows what new tricks Poison Ivy may learn by then?

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Wow, that’s like reading the story of our season squared! We also added a backspin remover after our first event, and relied on a ThriftyBot climb bracket kit, adding and a high climber arm (and a homemade third stage on the telescope/winch!) for the NE champs event. Love the inspirational story of a team figuring things out along the way and iterating to that degree.

I also noticed that team 195, a historical powerhouse, made some significant changes mid-season, including switching from a double-intake to a single-intake. I’ll have to use these examples to remind the team that mid-season changes aren’t a lack of planning or bad design. Even the best teams have to be willing to acknowledge when something isn’t working as well as they thought it would and put in the work to make it better.

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Drive coach for 1768 here-

6933 and 5687 were an absolute delight to play with. Archytas was such a wonderful group of students. The drive team was adaptable and excited to play together. Your scouting data/software was incredible. The situational awareness of both partners to adapt and play around each other was amazing.

A really special note to 5687 Outliers-

We had a quals match where a weird CAN issue caused one side of our drive to not work. As we were coming off the field they were immediately on the side of the field asking what happened/if they could help us. They came to our pit and jumped in to help us diagnose our problem knowing they played against us in the next match and wanting to face us at full strength.

We were beyond appreciative that Outliers saw through our bad luck afternoon Friday and picked us to play in elims.

FRC is amazing.

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Oh that solves the mystery of why there was so much tape on that field haha it didnt look good but at least they completed the event. So the floor in the arena was to soft to tape the carpet onto so they needed to bring in wood to sustain the weight of the robots? First time the NE champ has been in that arena? Could be the last as well.

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The floor of the arena was soil, as in dirt you could dig up with the heel of your shoe. It had been rolled, but was not a hard surface, and certainly not flat. The Ram Board stuff that was intended to be the only thing under the carpet is a resin-treated single wall cardboard. The last minute addition of plywood was an absolute necessity.

I sincerely hope that the use of that arena was a once-and-done for NEFIRST. The venue would be better than most with some form of unyielding floor under the carpet.

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Who’s idea was it to have the event there? That’s crazy! I’m sure there’s other big arenas in the state to hold two fields.

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Disclaimer: I am not part of NEFIRST or event organizing, only observing as a team mentor and event volunteer…

Team communications have suggested (e.g. “in future years…”) - and word through the grapevine is - that this venue is likely to be used again in future. There’s lots of good reasons…

  • It’s relatively central to NE (with the exception of Maine, who has a long ride)
  • It’s big enough for two fields - there aren’t as many places this size in NE as one might think, with a lot of the largest being in Boston and no doubt very expensive plus logistically difficult to deal with. (The Agganis Arena a few years ago is a good example of the problems of such a city location - fighting traffic driving into the city, challenging access for loading in/out, super expensive hotels, [lack of] trailer parking, annoying “security”, etc.)
  • Enough parking, all close by
  • I have no direct knowledge, but I assume it’s more cost effective than many alternatives at a time when budgets are tight (and none of us want to see registration fees jump more than they already are)

But yeah… robots on dirt is… not great. One wonders what other “portable floor” options might be plausible to make it better in future years. I am confident that will be a topic of discussion before it’s used again! (Regardless, major props to the volunteers that made it work this time around!)

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As a mentor on team 3146 who was on the #6 alliance i have to say I probably lost 10 years of my life going through those 4 (not 3) quarter finals matches. Especially after losing the 2nd match by a tie breaker Those matches were incredibly intense. Especially considering our intake needed repair after 2 of those 4 matches. And then to turn around and lose by a single point in the semi finals against the number 2 alliance. Wow!!

Disappointed there wasn’t a week off between districts championship and world championship we really tried our best to get the logistics sorted out for worlds but unfortunately had to decline the invite Aswell. We were trying every possible scenario to get there. But ran out of time.

Great year for 3146 overall looking forward to more success in the future!!

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I’m just so happy to reconnect with so many great people. FIRST is truly a unique community.

Derek: best FTA in FIRST. Thank you!
Brando: simply the best; hope you saw our undercarriage sign
Drew Orange Chaos: love you brother. You’re changing lives. Reach out for support any time!
Rick 2067: you are everything that FIRST is about. Thank you for your support.
James 95: super class act team
Bucks: we love and admire you

The volunteer crew working so hard to make the field playable: huge shout out!

Outliers: I echo Aaron our drive coach. You are a class act. We’ve admired you for many years. Thank you for you confidence in us.

6933: pleasure teaming with you!

176 Aces High: an incredibly worthy champion. You are a credit to FIRST.
238: congratulations!! Incredible job.
5847: defense has never been played better.

Al Fordiani
1768 Team Director

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FRC is amazing and so is 1768!

After our first quarterfinal match against them, we found one of our intake arms had snapped. As soon as we got back to the pit 1768 members were there asking how to help! Fortunately we had a spare arm and it was no problem getting it replaced in time - but yes FRC is amazing!

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So venue problems aside, I have to say I was actually so happy with how the event overall. It would have been really easy for the volunteers and staff who worked countless hours keeping the field playable to be grumpy or frustrated, but I never had a single negative interaction. If anything they went out of their way to make sure the teams got a good experience at every stage of the event! Major kudos to everyone who worked the event. I also felt like all the teams were just SUPER excited to be back at DCMP after two years away. Speaking for my team, we finally got to play with some old friends we hadn’t seen in forever and made plenty of new ones along the way. Every match I felt we were met in the halls with a “wow that match was really fun, great job” no matter what the outcome had been. It’d have been really easy for our partners 1027 to have been upset when we had to call for the backup in finals but they were as terrific in that moment as they had been to work with throughout elims. Or for 95 to be frustrated as we joined them for another finals loss but it was all smiles as we left the field together. We can’t wait to play with you all again!

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Those were some hefty nails for sure. Wish I snagged one during field takedown LOL

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I am on 3461, Number 3 seed captain. We could not believe how far that went, It just kept going.

We were a little annoyed with the Ref call for the climb points because it didnt seem like we were supporting 668 which would have given us the 5 points needed to win.

According to the rules though it was technically the right call, just one I wasnt happy about (Of course because it lost us the match and got us eliminated)

Im not worried about it though, Right at 4:00 we got the call that we qualified for worlds so I will see a lot of teams there in a few short days.

All in all it was by far the best event I have ever been to since my first event in 2019 as a rookie

Edit: I totally forgot to shout out 228 and 663 our alliance partners for making up a great alliance and a hell of a Quarterfinal. We will certainly never forget that Quarterfinal round

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3461 here, we can TOTALLY agree with that. You and your alliance played so well, we’ve never been as engaged with a quarters bout like that, and we applaud you guys for getting far!!! (Next time we’ll not fall :))

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As one who helped put together that #6 alliance I can agree with everyone else that it was as intense as a quarterfinal could possibly be. Huge thanks to you guys and 1073 for joining us on the ride through it all. Also big respect to 3461,228,663 for pushing us all to our limits. I was sad to see it end in a fall but all 3 of your robots were admirable all week long. For the kids of 6153 to see them go from missing playoffs at Pease to semi finalist alliance captains at New England’s it was an amazing rebound.

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Thank you to everyone who congratulated our team’s growth over the season. Our kids were always very surprised when I passed on the message. “Wait, team XYZ knows who we are?!”

Thank you to the media pass guy in queue for having a smile on his face the entire event even though he was probably dealing with a pretty chaotic job.

We’ll be back next year. Congrats to 238, 176, and 5846 on a job very well done.

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It was great to see our teams on the same alliance after all these years! I remember playing against you at Granite State your rookie year (maybe even your very first event?) and our seniors commenting that you were a team to watch. They were right about that! Congratulations on the great season and thanks for helping us give 238 a run for their money!

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8023 here, we didn’t make it past the quals, but playing with and against you was so fun.
I will not forget the attempt to strategize for a match we were on opposite sides of. I’d been going non-stop and really needed the laugh. The match we had together was really fun, even though we lost. I love the energy of your team.
Good luck in Houston, represent New England! I hope to see you all either during off-season events, or next year!

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