We ran our first event for this season today. Below are some of the quick learnings our team came up with. As with all opinions, your mileage may vary, but this may be useful for other teams and event partners.
Field reset was much faster than expected. We scheduled 4 minutes and had no issues could have gotten away with 3 easily. We usually offer skills during breaks but had the flexibility to offer it during the event period as we were 20 min ahead in both the first and second sessions.
Scoring was rapid after the matches with no issues. We had 3 brand new head referees who found their feet quickly once they had a few matches under their belts.
Judging was quick, with only 11 teams (as you would expect). The update to the judging manual this week apparently made for an interesting meeting with the judges this morning.
Scores were low as this was a mostly rookie event (10 of the 11 teams haven’t done Vex before) with a 70 in the last finals match. Robots were far more varied than in previous events we have hosted, but many armbots, some elevators and a Huey who was driven really well and was number 2 after quals.
Overall the new game played well once teams got going. The lack of practice really showed with some teams attempting to score single pins in goals. The Livestream played up a few times and didn’t record audio except the sounds from TM which is probably a good thing.
Any errors and omissions are my fault. If you are (really) keen you can find the Livestream on YouTube or through the robotevents webcast page.