The Manuel Updates and Q&A

I really like the manual updates.

I’ve been posting like mad as I have a summer camp going on and the wierd things just start happening. They addressed most of them in the update without answering then in the Q&A, but I think they’ll get to that soon. It’s nice to have the manual revised as opposed to having to go back to the Q&A. One of the questions was from yesterday! These people are good…

Not sure how I feel about the…

Match Stop Time – The time remaining (i.e. displayed on the timer or audience display) in a tiebreaker Finals Match when an Alliance ends the Match early by placing their controllers on the ground. The Match Stop Time is rounded down to the nearest even number. For example, if controllers are set down when the displayed time is 13 seconds, the Match Stop Time is recorded as 12 seconds. If an Alliance does not finish the Match early, they receive a default Match Stop Time of 0 seconds.

It’s only the case of a finals tiebreaker. I believe they are anticipating perfect scores, and this will be how they differentiate the winners. So, you have to clear the table, and clear it fastest!

I wish they would just do this for the finals as well for a couple of reasons…

First, it would prevent the ties in the first place.

Second, it will be confusing when we get to it as the kids are not used to it. If it happens at every tournament then it will be normal.

I don’t think there’ll be much need for it. The number of teams that are going to get a perfect score at most local events will be very small. I think this is just being put into place for worlds, or highly competitive states where the state competition might have teams clearing the field. And, the teams that will be affected will be the top tier teams, who should know the rules very well.

I don’t think this is only concerned only with Worlds. We saw a narrow range of average scores during the scrimmages we’ve done this summer, which could be indicative of what the early season could be like. Every final we’ve had so far would’ve triggered the Match Stop Time rule. Until this rule we just kept running the toe breakers until we had a winner.

We only ran one competition last week but the top two teams were within a point… There will be lots of ties!