Non - GP-ism at SVR

Competition Regional Competitions
1

I’ve been in FIRST for three years, since the start of my team in 2001. I won’t say I’ve seen it all, I don’t think anyone can. The past two years, our team went to SVR and Nationals last year (which was absolutely fantastic!), and I’ve always had a wonderful time, and come back to this “reality” thing grinning and cheerful.

This year, though, seems to be a little different. Maybe it’s just the game that’s got me jaded; it doesn’t seem to inspire as much goodwill between teams as the past two games have, and I don’t really like that there’s so little strategizing you can really do ahead of time - the rule of thumb for this game seems to be whoever can knock the most boxes from the ramp onto their side generally wins. Maybe it’s all the stuff that happened during the six weeks, with the motor specs coming so terribly late, trying to create a whole new drive train, not to mention normal team dynamics. But my own little theory is that over the years, the fundamental ideals of FIRST, the teamwork and gracous professionalism, the learning, wonder and excitement of this opportunity, they’ve lessened to a degree where it’s stopped being fun for some people.

Today at SVR, I was watching a match that my team was playing in. A robot on the other alliance flipped our partner, and while our two team’s spectators gasped and tried to make sure the robot was alright, the team who’s robot had flipped our partners’ started yelling and cheering even louder. Now, I don’t know why they were cheering, maybe it was for something their partner had done. But I was completely disgusted with their behavior.

I’ve heard from other people their stories of the loss of gracious professionalism, horror stories that make you wonder how they could have happened in a place like this. Others have spoken of the “gentlemen’s agreements” that have been going on this year, their experiences with the lack of GP. Guess I’ve added myself to their ranks. I just wish I could say I was the last one.

  • Casey Greene
    <Casey668>
2

*Originally posted by kymtilani *
**trying to create a whole new drive train

  • Casey Greene
    <Casey668> **

we always make an entirely new drive train in the 6 weeks.

but yeah, the rest of this has been discussed before in a few posts, search around for them

3

Terribly, terribly sorry. What I meant by the drive train was that we had a two-motor chain drive for the past two years, and this year we had four motors and independent wheels. Terribly sorry for any confusion it may have caused you, or may cause others in the future.

  • Casey
4

Their behavior, though perhaps not morally correct, is certainly understandable.
When one robot flips another, it is just a part of the game. It shows the superiority of one robot over another in one of the most fundamental aspects of the robot that appears in almost every game:stability.

If one team is happy because of the demonstration of their robot’s stability and power, why shouldn’t they cheer?

If any complaints about cheering were to be made, I would have complained that there was not enough of it, not that there was too much.

5

*Originally posted by srjjs *
**Their behavior, though perhaps not morally correct, is certainly understandable.
When one robot flips another, it is just a part of the game. It shows the superiority of one robot over another in one of the most fundamental aspects of the robot that appears in almost every game:stability.

If one team is happy because of the demonstration of their robot’s stability and power, why shouldn’t they cheer?

If any complaints about cheering were to be made, I would have complained that there was not enough of it, not that there was too much. **

I think cheering is fine by and large, but sometimes it’s inappropriate. What if two race cars were going down the track and one flipped and lit on fire. Probably the other team wouldn’t cheer, even if it meant they were going to win. True, that’s an extreme case to illustrate the point.

I guess the point is that it is against the rules to flip another robot intentionally, and the other team is liable to feel a little bad about that happening to their robot, so cheering would be a little insensitive. Comments like, “Whoa”, “wow” or “holy cow” might be appropriate, but loud cheering right at that point, especially if the robot is a bit top heavy or having some kind of problem, seems a little like rubbing salt in the wounds. Now if it wasn’t illegal to tip robots intentionally, maybe it wouldn’t be as annoying.

It also depends on whose robot you just tipped. Have they been cheering loudly every time they bashed into your robot? Then go for it. Are they a stacker robot, trying to put some bins up and you just rammed them and knocked them over? Nah, I don’t think we want to cheer too loud about that.

I think the idea is to have some consideration for the feelings of the other team members. Of course, it is a contest and people do get excited at contests. It would just be nice if everyone cared about the other people enough to think about what effect they are having on them. Certainly when teams help other teams before the match, that is showing that they care.

As to the agreements that have been occurring, unfortunately the current rules “celebrate” (by which I mean “reward”) that practice, so it is liable to crop up until the rules get changed. Same problem really I think–caring more about winning than about the overall effect that one is causing. I have seen people pretty saddened by the results, saying such matches are boring, lacking in spirit, etc. (Some regionals seem to have avoided this all together, so it is possible, and if anyone knows how it was avoided, I would love to know.)

However, I think the post season forums for team discussion will be quite lively this year. And I bet there are some positive changes for next year. (There will be if I have anything to say about it.)

:slight_smile:

6

*Originally posted by kymtilani *
**I’ve been in FIRST for three years, since the start of my team in 2001. I won’t say I’ve seen it all, I don’t think anyone can. The past two years, our team went to SVR and Nationals last year (which was absolutely fantastic!), and I’ve always had a wonderful time, and come back to this “reality” thing grinning and cheerful.

This year, though, seems to be a little different. Maybe it’s just the game that’s got me jaded; it doesn’t seem to inspire as much goodwill between teams as the past two games have, and I don’t really like that there’s so little strategizing you can really do ahead of time - the rule of thumb for this game seems to be whoever can knock the most boxes from the ramp onto their side generally wins. Maybe it’s all the stuff that happened during the six weeks, with the motor specs coming so terribly late, trying to create a whole new drive train, not to mention normal team dynamics. But my own little theory is that over the years, the fundamental ideals of FIRST, the teamwork and gracous professionalism, the learning, wonder and excitement of this opportunity, they’ve lessened to a degree where it’s stopped being fun for some people.

Today at SVR, I was watching a match that my team was playing in. A robot on the other alliance flipped our partner, and while our two team’s spectators gasped and tried to make sure the robot was alright, the team who’s robot had flipped our partners’ started yelling and cheering even louder. Now, I don’t know why they were cheering, maybe it was for something their partner had done. But I was completely disgusted with their behavior.

I’ve heard from other people their stories of the loss of gracious professionalism, horror stories that make you wonder how they could have happened in a place like this. Others have spoken of the “gentlemen’s agreements” that have been going on this year, their experiences with the lack of GP. Guess I’ve added myself to their ranks. I just wish I could say I was the last one.

  • Casey Greene
    <Casey668> **

This is a non-issue. I didn’t see the match, but if I was on the team against you I’d be cheering, too. Don’t think that if one of your opponents was somehow disabled or a no show you wouldn’t be extatic at the chance your team could rack up tons of points. It sucks your alliance had a robot that flipped over, but it’s all part of the game.

I disagree with the comparison of the FIRST RC to the NASCAR fire scenario. In NASCAR you’re dealing with peoples’ lives at stake, and in FIRST it’s just your robot. Yeah, to some of us our robot is our lives, many people on these boards can tell you I feel that way about my robots. If your robot gets flipped over, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s damaged. Even if it is damaged, it’s not the end of your life. FIRST is a wonderful distraction from the real world which is pretty successful at roping in kids to technical futures. It’s not the only thing that’s important in life. You’ve got to let things go. I’ve had a tough time with this, but this year and last year I’ve come a long way to recognizing this as a game and nothing more.

Getting back to robots tipping and being flipped… It’s either a design flaw on your partner’s part (high CG) or something else which could have been avoided. What I’m trying to say (with less than 12 hours of sleep over 3 days) is that you ought to concern yourself with convincing your own team to not be careless in your design or driving so that you don’t tip over. You can’t do anything about the other robots. There’s no magic wand you can wave to make your partner be a better robot or a more complimentary robot. Roll with the punches life (and FIRST) throws at you. If you don’t, you’ll never be happy. Don’t make life so rigid and serious, you’ll never make it out alive.

There’s my more than half asleep $0.02

7

*Originally posted by Bill Gold *
**Getting back to robots tipping and being flipped… It’s either a design flaw on your partner’s part (high CG) or something else which could have been avoided. What I’m trying to say (with less than 12 hours of sleep over 3 days) is that you ought to concern yourself with convincing your own team to not be careless in your design or driving so that you don’t tip over. You can’t do anything about the other robots. There’s no magic wand you can wave to make your partner be a better robot or a more complimentary robot. Roll with the punches life (and FIRST) throws at you. If you don’t, you’ll never be happy. Don’t make life so rigid and serious, you’ll never make it out alive.

There’s my more than half asleep $0.02 **

Totally agreed Bill. as anyone who watched us at SVR can tell you, we had severe flipping issues. As they can also tell you, we are about 12" high, with most weight under 9". The problem is our lack of weight. After removing all of our useless stuff, we were sitting at 75ish lbs, way too light. We didnt do anything to remedy the situation until the end of the day, because we thought it was some freak situation, but by that time, it was too late, and we were in 45th place. We were going to add a Lead brick this morning, but I guess that never found its way to our pits. Most of it was driver error. You cannot continue to drive forward when being tipped, you also cannot sit there and let yourself be tipped by a wedgebot. Oh well…the robot sucked, but who cares? I still had a ton of fun.

Cory

8

*Originally posted by Bill Gold *
**Don’t think that if one of your opponents was somehow disabled or a no show you wouldn’t be extatic at the chance your team could rack up tons of points.
**

I see what you are saying. However I personally wouldn’t be ecstatic about that. Imagine that through some massive fluke, an opponent no shows in every match, so your team winds up the winner and gets a trophy. Would you feel great? I doubt it. I certainly wouldn’t because I would know that our team didn’t really do anything to earn it. When I go to a FIRST competition, among other things such teaching our students to use their knowledge, meeting friends and admiring each others robots, I go to compete, and that means that I need opponents. I just want opponents that will abide by the rules, so its fair and honorable. Some tipping is going to occur, but deliberate tipping is against the rules. Also I don’t think it is unreasonable to hope that teams will indicate that they aren’t deliberately tipping other robots, by showing some concern. (True, we won’t die if they don’t.)

*Originally posted by Bill Gold *
**Getting back to robots tipping and being flipped… It’s either a design flaw on your partner’s part (high CG) or something else which could have been avoided. **

Well I agree with you. Most of the time, a team whose robot tips should just take responsibility for the fact that it happened, due to design, driving, etc. But sometimes, another team has a robot flipping cow catcher or they just went too far by ramming a robot really hard that would obviously tip because of being off balance, and then I would say something about it, because that is part of being responsible also: communicating when something is out of line.

Yes, you are right, FIRST is not in a life and death struggle, but we are trying to change the world. That’s pretty important, and the game is helping us do that. So I guess the game matters to that extent.

Anyway, I like this game. I don’t see anything wrong with wanting to keep it friendly.

9

Flipping in general is an odd thing. For example if you were to hit a robot on the ramp to try and get 25 points, and it flipped over, teams cheer. But when ever a robot gets back up, I see those same teams cheering even louder. I know I did both.

the rule of thumb for this game seems to be whoever can knock the most boxes from the ramp onto their side generally wins.
So is stacking last time I checked, MOE won a finals round stacking. Lack of stratedgy? HOW? Stacks give me more headaches then balls in a goal. Getting the KOH points is also essential and has caused many new and interesting design concepts. I think maybe all this loss of gp stuff is due more to the less rescricting robot contact rules. 4 years ago you could hardly touch another robot, Now just about anything goes. But isn’t that what our kind of robots do? (I’m talkin’ the rover explorer kind. another whole discussion.) Gp isn’t being lost, the game is just more exciting. that’s why so many cheer. Compitition is like that.
As for the pre-arranged matches, they disgust me. Not only non-gp like; But in any other compititions, it’s illegal.:mad:

10

I think a better parallel than the NASCAR racing can be found within the game itself.
A closer example would be in autonomous mode. If your robot reaches the top of the ramp and knocks down the wall before your opponent, should you cheer? That can certainly be interpreted as a failure of your opponent’s robot, but that does not mean that it is any less a success of yours.

11

I believe that this is a matter of perspective. I can see someone getting mad because their robot flipped (specially if its early in the game) and their left motionless, but by the same token, that is a strategy that might have been calculated. If you know that your opponents robot is extremely good, and their only weakness is the fact that they flip, or can be flipped easily, and your at a disadvantgage, you’d probably use it. I know that in one of our matches at UCF, we where flipped by swamp thing because they where blocking the ramp, and we where trying to get through, and we got MAD. But when their team cheered, we understood, because that is the strategy/move they choose, and they executed it perfectly. I’m nbot supporting the use of “battlebots” in a FIRST competition, but if you get flipped, you have to agree “that’s pretty darn cool”

12

*Originally posted by srjjs *
**I think a better parallel than the NASCAR racing can be found within the game itself.
A closer example would be in autonomous mode. If your robot reaches the top of the ramp and knocks down the wall before your opponent, should you cheer? That can certainly be interpreted as a failure of your opponent’s robot, but that does not mean that it is any less a success of yours. **

I agree that a NASCAR racing car flipping doesn’t parallel someone flipping your robot. After all, we don’t ride in our robots. I was just trying to illustrate with a very extreme case, that sometimes it isn’t appropriate to cheer when something bad happens to your opponent, even if that event means that you are going to win.

Also you are right. We can all get too sensitive to things like people cheering when they beat us to the stack. That is meant to be part of the game.

My only point about flipping robots is that it is against the rules to flip a robot on purpose, so if we do flip someone, maybe we shouldn’t cheer too loudly about it, since if it happens enough times, the referees may decide that we are doing it on purpose and disqualify us. Also hopefully teams aren’t employing tactics that they know will flip other robots “accidentally on purpose”.

Other than that, if it happens, it happens. It does add a certain amount of drama to the game when a robot goes over. Maybe in future years, we will all pay more attention to having self-righting robots–a cool ability I wish we had.

(Our robot is 5 feet high this year, but so far we haven’t tipped. I hope it stays that way.)

13

I think the GP level at SVR was extremely high - Our team was in a quarter final match where both our robot and the robot of our mentor team (opponent) both got flipped - in both cases due to teams trying hard to win, not teams trying to intentionally disable opponents. Also it was pretty easy to get flipped if you have two robots both going up the ramp at the same time, and I am surprised there wasn’t more carnage!

The line between fierce competition and mean sprited competition may be very fine, but I did not see it being crossed at SVR.

14

I have to agree, mainly because we were the one that got flipped over!!!

There is a good side to this though. After the match the whole team came over to apologize to us.

15

*Originally posted by Dr.Bot *
**I think the GP level at SVR was extremely high - Our team was in a quarter final match where both our robot and the robot of our mentor team (opponent) both got flipped - in both cases due to teams trying hard to win, not teams trying to intentionally disable opponents. Also it was pretty easy to get flipped if you have two robots both going up the ramp at the same time, and I am surprised there wasn’t more carnage!

The line between fierce competition and mean sprited competition may be very fine, but I did not see it being crossed at SVR. **

*Originally posted by Blaster *
**Re: I agree

I have to agree, mainly because we were the one that got flipped over!!!

There is a good side to this though. After the match the whole team came over to apologize to us. **

Wow! Even if gracious professionalism possibly slipped briefly, it certainly sounds like it prevailed in Silicon Valley.

Congratulations.

We will have to try to do as well in S. Calif. this week.

16

well…368 did flip a few robots…

and damage a couple

it was not intentional,

and as they said before, it is part of the game

i think that the silicon valley regional had a lot of gracious professionalism compared to other regionals

there was no agreements, and we all had fun <-main point in first rite??

i did however witness a beginning of a fight, between two teams…who shall remain nameless…

the team that got flipped was extremely mad, and confronted another team.

the confrontation was brief, and was only verbal, but it did happen and i hope it wont happen again.

17

*Originally posted by CaseyG668 *
**
This year, though, seems to be a little different. Maybe it’s just the game that’s got me jaded; it doesn’t seem to inspire as much goodwill between teams as the past two games have, and I don’t really like that there’s so little strategizing you can really do ahead of time - the rule of thumb for this game seems to be whoever can knock the most boxes from the ramp onto their side generally wins. Maybe it’s all the stuff that happened during the six weeks, with the motor specs coming so terribly late, trying to create a whole new drive train, not to mention normal team dynamics. But my own little theory is that over the years, the fundamental ideals of FIRST, the teamwork and gracous professionalism, the learning, wonder and excitement of this opportunity, they’ve lessened to a degree where it’s stopped being fun for some people.
**

I disagree with the no strategy thing. If anything, this game has much more strategy than last year, although probably not as much as 2001. Our team strategizes with other teams for as much time as we can before a match(qualifying or elimination). We scout the robots of our opponents and we decided on a suitable strategy. We ended up top seed because of this. If you take a look at our robot you would probably ask “how the heck did that robot get top seed out of 73 teams!?”. Basically, it was all through our versatility and the ease with which we were able to work with our partners IMO, although obviously luck was a part of it(watch the last match on galileo, we won by one point, and we would have dropped a LOT if we would have lost). But honestly, I only remember two matches where I walked away without really feeling that we had worked well with our partners.

In my opinion, most teams think strategy is optional this year, and the key to winning is their bot. IMO, that is waaaay wrong. It is optional in the way that it is not nearly as necessary as it was in 2001, but it is an essential part of the game this year, if you wanted to win.

18

*Originally posted by CaseyG668 *
**I’ve been in FIRST for three years, since the start of my team in 2001. I won’t say I’ve seen it all, I don’t think anyone can. The past two years, our team went to SVR and Nationals last year (which was absolutely fantastic!), and I’ve always had a wonderful time, and come back to this “reality” thing grinning and cheerful.

This year, though, seems to be a little different. Maybe it’s just the game that’s got me jaded; it doesn’t seem to inspire as much goodwill between teams as the past two games have, and I don’t really like that there’s so little strategizing you can really do ahead of time - the rule of thumb for this game seems to be whoever can knock the most boxes from the ramp onto their side generally wins. Maybe it’s all the stuff that happened during the six weeks, with the motor specs coming so terribly late, trying to create a whole new drive train, not to mention normal team dynamics. But my own little theory is that over the years, the fundamental ideals of FIRST, the teamwork and gracous professionalism, the learning, wonder and excitement of this opportunity, they’ve lessened to a degree where it’s stopped being fun for some people.

Today at SVR, I was watching a match that my team was playing in. A robot on the other alliance flipped our partner, and while our two team’s spectators gasped and tried to make sure the robot was alright, the team who’s robot had flipped our partners’ started yelling and cheering even louder. Now, I don’t know why they were cheering, maybe it was for something their partner had done. But I was completely disgusted with their behavior.

I’ve heard from other people their stories of the loss of gracious professionalism, horror stories that make you wonder how they could have happened in a place like this. Others have spoken of the “gentlemen’s agreements” that have been going on this year, their experiences with the lack of GP. Guess I’ve added myself to their ranks. I just wish I could say I was the last one.

  • Casey Greene
    <Casey668> **

I agree 100%. The entire tone seemed different this year, and last year as well.

I think FIRST is being “geared down” to rookies, and the average person - as a result, it’s losing a lot of the inventiveness and professionalism that made it great.

The emphasis is now definitely on “Gracious” and not “Professionalism.”

This was all predicted in 2001: “The End of Elegance” in FIRST

I think FIRST has hit or is beginning to hit its apogee, and will slowly burn itself down to a managable level.

FIRST doesn’t need to recruit more teams. FIRST needs to keep teams around for 2+ years, and let teams become more experianced. I’d rather see 30 good teams with innovative robots at a regional, than 60 teams that are clueless.

I also have an inclination to believe that some of the people in the upper echelons of FIRST might have lost sight of what this program was about.

It’s not about including everyone: inclusion will be the death of this program.

It’s about setting us apart in a good way.

19

Mayb the robot that was tipped was a serious threat to the opposing teams, and they knew they couldnt beat it, so they did what was wrong and tipped it. Thats one way of controlling a game. I disagree with it, and would rather have seen the match been played out by all four robots. Ohh well…

In the last 30 seconds of one of our matches, both of our robots were on the ramp, one of theirs, and a ton of bins on our side of the field. Their other alliance robot was stuck - high centered on a bin. So i went and unstuck them, and then they headed for the ramp. They get up there and wouldnt let us up. I pushed and shooved until all robots ended on the ramp. You shoulda heard the gasp from the audience when i drove our robot off the ramp.

Most things that happen in a match are for stratagy, you dont go tipping other robots just to prove you can. I tipped a robot once. They were able to get up, and I’ll tell you, they showen no mercy after that.!