For the question mark reaction, here’s Northern Lights field from last weekend.
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That might depend on which side you replace.
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Did the FTAs feel that this 1-3/4" error was just… not too far outside the 1/2" general tolerance allowed by the layout and making diagram (which is incorporated by reference into chapter 5 of the game manual) ?
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They may have just… not noticed. FIM Escanaba had loading zones that were nearly 6ft too small and no one noticed until after the event was over when watching match videos. It wouldn’t be the first time something got overlooked during setup.
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To spectators, it may seem easy. “Oh, just place the cube and cone”. But once you get into the nuts and bolts of the game especially after watching/playing in week 1, its actually very difficult, and their are a lot of nuances to be careful of. Partially design mods (ex. Having a high center of gravity) and some strategy (ex. Being an incredible middle row bot can put you at a high advantage). Another thing I have noticed from week 1-there are a LOT of elevators.
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It was more along the lines of did the FTAs and New Hampshire want the regional field to run with one side border or the AndyMark practice field at the regional to run with one side border. Just one of the joys of a week one event, sometimes there are bits missing. Normally FIRST overnights the missing part, but as I understand it, with the weather it wasn’t guaranteed to make it. I offered up ARC’s side border knowing it would connect to the field, and after about 2 hours of discussions I was not privy to they said bring it over.
Teams did field measurements, but no one seemed interested in the width of the loading zones. The scoring grids, Charge Station, and community barrier were all correct relative to each other.
The alternative would have been to do something like what happened in 2014 when the support structure for the goals above the Drivers’s stations was missing so after four or five trips to Home Depot we had constructed a 2x4 framework under the goals and finished field build after midnight.
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One thing I’ve learned is that some Twitch channels are saving the live broadcast as they go, (which is wonderful, THANK YOU!) and others aren’t 
. This is disappointing because matches get missed occasionally during scouting and being able to rescout is invaluable. Additionally, some of us remote folks can’t be glued to the screen during the event and would like to scroll through later in the day. I don’t understand why there is inconsistency from one event to the other.
I realize they eventually show up on Youtube but “eventuallly” can be quite a long delay.
Here’s hoping someone can tell me where we can watch video of matches from earlier in the day during the event on those disappointing channels without waiting forever.
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An additional thing I’ve learned about the charging station in our week 2, is that the rivets holding the polycarb down, get roughed up by chassis scraping them, and will start grabbing bumpers. We had a super consistent auto-balance, that stopped working on the blue side, with it folding opposite of us because of snagging on our bumpers. We brought it up to FTAs and they said it was “within tolerance”.
This was only a week 2, so between the rivets and the black tread marks, expect those charging stations to basically have the texture of sand paper by week 5.
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I think the link / Sustainability is more like the Rotor RP in 2017. That year that RP as accomplished in 0.32% of the matches in Week 1. By Champs, it was 26% of quals matches.
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2023 Sustainability (links) is more like the 2017 Pressure (fuel) RP, if I am recalling 2017 correctly.
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I guess both RPs were difficult to achieve in Week 1. The interesting question then will be whether the Sustainability will progress like the kPA or the Rotor RP? The kPA was constrained by design choices by teams that didn’t install shooters where almost every robot could place gears, so I’m leaning toward the Rotor trend. Achieving the Sustainability RP is a proxy for the likelihood of filling the grid.
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At ISR#3 the sustainability bonus had a 42.5% success rate, at week 2.5
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except sometimes they don’t start for a few hours, or not at all, so, apparently, they don’t ALWAYS have it scripted.