Yeah The event was ran very smoothly and i think we were ahead of schedule!
Ohio op
Yeah we had a really well run event. We were ahead of schedule by like an hour at the end or something like that.
as someone who saw the Ohio state championship stream, their matches are so streamlined that one match goes right after another. Definitely something I’ve never seen, as one of the events in my region had a 4hr delay on quals. They also blocked skills during that time because some mom complained that the goals are too tight
Ok, so that’s just trash talk to us EPs. Turned a 64 team single division event out, nice. Got the event done with no major crashes, bonus. Finished an hour early? Either running 22 min turn times on three fields, or I need to give back my EP license. That’s just amazing. I make roboteers eat pizza and drive across lunch in that size event.
Watched the first part of their stream, turns out the staff was amazing, are they available to come to Delmarva in 2021?
All of you are making me feel young again.
When I first started coding (in assembly language) for my first robotics competition?
Nothing fanciful btw… we only had micromouse to play with. And I was using 5.25” 160k.
And a dot matric printer to print out the long chain of source code for debugging.
Hmmm - never saw anything about stopping skills because of “some mom” complaining in Game Manual. Moreover, how does changing the field setup mid-event (I am assuming it is after many teams ran their runs) fair for all those teams who did their skills runs with earlier setup. Level playing field means same conditions for all - sometimes that means a perceived fault impacts everyone equally. With remote skills this year, field setups are probably tuned to the robot doing skills runs. Takes some element adapting to field conditions that we typically have at live events.
That is why my team checks the height of all the goals BEFORE any matches or runs start.
yup - and the next step is for a drive team member to alert the referee or Head Referee to make adjustments to the field. Moms are not members of VRC drive teams AFAIK.
I think what is troubling to me, is it sounds like the skills field was shutdown in this case for prolong period of time (read hour plus) - which is not fair to teams waiting to do their runs. If the event was on schedule, then the skills field would be shut after last Qualifying Match - so ranking information could be relayed to Judge Advisor for judging process. Many seasoned EPs know keeping all fields up and running on schedule is important.
Finishing QM an hour early could be problematic for teams - one of the elements of the tournament format is to allow teams that “down time” to recharge batteries, incrementally improve their robots, scout teams, meet judges for interviews… if you push the schedule faster than the generated schedule, you are depriving teams of those opportunities, catching them off-guard for planning, and potentially causing mistakes to happen because they are rushed.
Bringing it back to the Bo3 vs Bo1 debate, I’m still curious what the reasoning was for switching VEXU to Bo1, as I’ve yet to see any discussion about that. I’m new to VEXU this year so I never experienced it with Bo3, but there are definitely times where it feels like Bo1 is just rushing it way too much.
So I’m going to play devils advocate and be a real," just exactly do you think you are?" level jerk commenting on someone else event.
- Close a skills field to use as a qual field to catch up - Been there, done that.
- Close skills off because my queue people are saying they are “in line for skills” - Been there, done that
- Run 30 mins behind at the start and then micomanage the death out of people to get it to run faster? "Hey so it’s not 3-2-1-Go as 4 syllables, its 321go as two. Go Faster. – Been there, done that
- Electronics issues where the computer USB port died and I just brought out the switch and we did that – Been there, done that (but it took an hour of other people messing around to figure out the computer was broken)
Stuff happens.
agreed.
Experience implies that many have been down these same paths along the way where it is painful.
I am just responding to comments about situations mentioned in this thread, not specific events.
Reframe - what can you do about events that run way over QM schedule? is it good to run way ahead of schedule, what are the down side? what to do about difficult adults? difficult teams? when do you benefit from multiple divisions? multiple fields? impacts on volunteers?
The real remedy we know is for good support from RSM, experienced EP/Coaches, and volunteers. After the fact, reflect on improvements.
Always room for improvement, and always horror stories.
So when we fall behind I (flog, beat, scream, ummm wait inspire yea thats the word) inspire the staff to go faster and when they get to 75% I tell them how great they are. We then coast to the end +/- 10 minutes to the end.
Most epic was halted an event for an hour to let two teams arrive that had been stuck in accident traffic. We started out badly, with my hour and general slow we were 90 mins behind. And it all picked up and we did alliance selection on time
I think that double elimination would only really make sense in round robin with 8 alliances. If tournaments ran BO1 double elimination, it would be too many matches with 16 alliances. For low stakes local tournaments, BO1 isnt too bad since it allows 16 alliances with 32 teams in elims, but at state and signature events, BO3 is needed before finals for obvious reasons. The best solution I can think of would be 12 seeds of 2 where the top 4 seeds get a bye and the bottom 8 seeds have to play each other in a BO1 match. After the 8 bottom seeds play, the rest of the tournament would be BO3. This rewards the top 4 seeds for ranking high and punishes the bottom 8 seeds for ranking low. 12 seeds of 2 also means that 24 teams would make it to elims, which is the same number of teams as 8 seeds of 3 teams.
I can now say with personal experience that Bo1 is absolute trash.
What is your metric for you statement?
Probably he is referring to the fact that if your (or your partner’s) robot breaks once, you lose.
Also 10:05:11 
That is not a Bo3 issue - the robot was not capable of performing the task. Do overs in many cases don’t happen in life.
And yet we’re on SN11 and, like, the fifth mars rover. We both know that the robot was capable of performing the task; just didn’t work that time.
That’s not true. They don’t sacrifice you to the gods of calculus if you failed your midterm. Or do they?
The history of human civilization is mostly about figuring out how to protect ourselves from the random acts of nature and our own stupidity.
Is anyone going to argue that seat belts are bad because they interfere with natural selection?
can confirm my robot is not functional and that i am just bad at vex