At my last tournament, we came back to the pits for a total of 2min before we were called out again for another match. This was a problem because my team tests the auton and the functionality of the robot to make sure nothing broke. But we really only had enough time to change our batteries. We did not finish putting on the license plates and we had to bypass queuing to go straight to the field. When the machine started we realized we had a low 9v battery preventing VexNet from connecting so we had to power cycle our robot during the match before it would start moving. This made our couches mad at us for not being prepared. Luckily our alliance was able to win the match and we were able to do a last second park. I wish there was a rule or a software change that would require that teams be given a 5 to 10-minute intermission. Also, this was a tournament with 36 teams.
+1, there really should be something in the software that keeps the same team’s matches from happening too closely together.
That said, there are a few things you can do to decreases the time it takes to reset between matches. These custom nameplate holders developed by 6627 can be 3D printed and used to swap license plates much more easily.
You can also program several autons and select them with an LCD to make sure you have a lower scoring alternative if your main auton doesn’t work.
Good luck!
We do something similar we use poppers on the license plates and we use jumpers to choose 1 of our 8 autons but the V5 bots damage our internal motor gear by pushing so we need to test the auton every time so it is consistent. Thanks for the comment.
Even with 36 teams, there is a chance that you’ll play close to back-to-back matches. Having said that, the number of back to back matches can be minimised, it just depends on the experience of the EP running the event. However, as a team you have access to the schedule for the whole tournament so you should be aware of this from well before matches start so you can mitigate the impact by being extra prepared at that point (team mates ready with replacement batteries, spare cable ties/bands etc at the ready).
I think this could be pretty good
Tournament manager does all the scheduling. There’s nothing that an EP can do about that. It’s actually an interesting component of the program that you could try out on your own. I’m curious how many matches each team got. With six matches and 36 teams TM will space them pretty well. With eight or nine matches you’re going to have some pretty close. TM gives you stats after it creates the matches. Most of the time when I try to recreate the matches again and again the spacing is exactly the same.
And those V5s are pretty nasty… 
Tournaments where teams don’t have enough time between matches are usually the result of having too many fields for the number of teams. Event partners can adjust the time between matches, but they usually set it to as small a number as possible. With too many fields, teams are either in the queue or on the field all the time. My rule of thumb is:
1 field: 20 or fewer teams
2 fields: 20-40 teams
3 fields: 40-55 teams
4 fields: 55+
If you had 36 teams and more than two fields, you might have been tight.
By the way, Tournament Manager’s scheduler is far from random, and it does try to make sure matches are not scheduled too close together for a single team. The fewer the teams and the greater the number of fields, the more chance you will have quick turnarounds.
There already is.
However, “keeping the same team’s matches from happening too closely together” is directly at odds with the other requirement of the match scheduler - which is minimizing the number of times you play with or against the same team at the same event.
Generating a decent match schedule is a surprisingly difficult problem. If anyone is interested, go search on ChiefDelphi.com for some of the really old threads that discuss the issue (which occurred back in the years that FRC had some especially bad scheduler implementations).
@DylanMckenzie33 out of interest, which tournament was it?
On the topic of license plates, we started using Velcro last year and it works like a charm. No complicated stuff needed.
My guess is this one. They played in match 18 at 12:42 and match 22 at 13:06; that’s 24 minutes between match start times. When you look at your schedule at the beginning of the day and see a fast turnaround, you need to plan for it. Bring everything you’ll need for both matches (license plates, extra batteries, tools) along to the first match and work on your robot in the queuing line. 10-15 minutes should be plenty of time to get your robot ready to compete.
4-6 match turnarounds are average where I’m from and when I competed. With proper planning that shouldn’t be too bad.
Besides, you’re never guaranteed to have time to check autonomous among other things.
My bad I should have clarified it was an eliminations match. But the matches were moving way faster then they should have been.
That’s the one I assumed it was but wanted to check. 24 minutes (less match time and 5 minutes faff at each end of the match) should still be no problem!
The reffs were speeding the matches up so we never got that time.
Match 18 played at 11:41:03 AM and match 22 played at 11:54:10 AM, so there was a 13 minute gap between those matches, so yes the event was running the matches faster than scheduled.
HOWEVER, match 18 was scheduled to play at 10:42 AM. So, the event was running an hour behind schedule for some reason. Whatever happened, it was at the beginning of the day - the first match started 74 minutes late. In that case, it’s not surprising the event was playing matches as fast as they could in order to catch up. If the event hadn’t done this, they likely would have had to trim one match per team off the schedule. And, since the event already only had 6 qualification matches per team, that would have been a pretty big deal. 6 matches per team is already pretty weak in order to get decent rankings, reducing that to 5 would be much worse. Also, it appears only 35 teams actually played in the qualification matches.
Spot on explanation of what we face when running events. We will be aggressive to get matches back on schedule because it is important for teams to get a full 6-8 matches in qualifying rounds to have representative data for alliance selection.
That said, I have been overenthusiastic in the past -and realize the key is to communicate to the teams what is going on so they are not blindsided and understand what is needed.
In eliminations we ask that all teams be present. Once round is done, we typically move to the field and go. If your team needs more time, ask for your 3 minute timeout.
In that case, it’s the EP’s fault, not anything in Tournament Manager. Elimination matches aren’t scheduled, the EP can play them in whatever order they want at whatever pace they want.
Our event has two fields and in past years (best-of-3), we kept teams on the field until their best-of-3 matchup was done. No removing robots from the field. Before that policy, we spent way too much time tracking down teams and had a lot of dead time between elimination matches (and actually had a team leave the venue early because they incorrectly thought they had been eliminated, no joke). Now in best-of-1, we’ll just run through all the matches in each round and have a mini-awards break between rounds to give teams a few extra minutes to prepare. All of this is told to the alliance captains so they know what’s coming.
Now that’s a bit extreme. I can almost see a valid complaint there. However, any time your schedule has a quick turnaround of 4 or so matches, I’d be prepared to not return to the pits between those two matches.
We also push teams to keep up at the events that I run. First matches of the day with teams that have never played before go very slow (slow setup, figuring out how to connect, safety glasses not on, etc). So by lunch time we are picking up the pace for turn times. We run multiple fields, so we can squeeze things down pretty good.
Be prepared for this to happen at all the events.
I liked the license plate sandwich on standoffs, a cool design. We mount blue plates on robots with screws and then snap the red plate on with VEX IQ pins. Plate change takes seconds.