The event that the OP is referring to was a tournament - not a skills event. It was a small tournament and the eliminations were complete by the early afternoon. Then, as was published in the agenda on robotevents (and aproved by the RSM), the skills fields were opened for about three hours. The qualifying criteria only recommends theee tries of each type - it does not mandate it.
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Right, I’ve run events with unlimited skills attempts with time permitting.
I think I will jump and say why we put in the skills limits at our events - first is the time factor, we have a lot of the teams do skills runs during the event. So for Regionals with 48 teams, you are looking at around six hours of field us. We are working on ideas for the load balancing so we do not have long lines at the end of qualifying matches. Second, we want teams to have as many qualifying rounds to get useful information for scouting. Typically we run 8 qualifying matches for regular events, 10 for regionals in a day with three competition fields. It seems to work out.
When we did not limit, we had teams who literally lived at the skills field slowing down the opportunities for other teams to get their runs.
I would not be surprised to see in the future that limits on skills run be put at qualifying tournaments.
That time is now. At the EP summit in Texas this past summer it was announced that ALL qualifying events would have a mandatory limit of 3 autonomous and 3 driver skills runs per team. It was made clear that was a MANDATORY maximum limit (but events could lower the limit if desired).
Last season I saw an IQ event where a team ran 20+ attempts in just one of the categories alone. At that number of runs it’s no longer a “skills run” but it’s practice runs that becomes official if it happens to be good enough.
I have seen those extraordinary number of attempts to squeeze one more point. Your point is correct, practice at home, demonstrate skills at events. Mastery is when you are consistent both at home and at competitions.
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Are you sure 3 max tries is mandatory? Even the Google Signature Event last weekend allowed more than three of each. The qualifying criteria only says that three tries is “recommended.”
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I have no idea what was said at the EP summit, but it’s clear from the qualifying criteria there is currently no mandatory maximum limit.
Robot SkillsRobot Skills at events should follow these guidelines:
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The RECF recommends the maximum matches be set at 3 each, but an EP has the option to set that max at 2 or 1 each.
It’s obvious even though we have instructions from the RECF at the EP summit, and a qualifying document, and a regional support manager system to regulate all these details, not all regions are actually following all the guidelines the same. In some regions rules are guidelines and in other regions guidelines are rules. Your mileage may vary.
If anyone wants to track down the discussion on max skills events it can be found in this series of videos…
What I’m saying is that an EP can legally set the maximum of each skills challenge to 4, 5, or even more (including unlimited) the way the rules are currently written.
While neither of these should be used as rules compliance checks, neither TM nor RobotEvents (when uploading scores) even hints that a maximum greater than 3 is not allowed, further suggesting that a maximum greater than 3 is currently allowed.
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Other than explaining my best understanding of the rules, what I’ve heard, and what my source is, I’m afraid what I say beyond that is immaterial. Your RSM is the place to get these questions answered in an official way. All RSM won’t respond the same, that’s why YMMV.
If anyone happens to find the discussion in the EP summit videos please share, I’d love to watch the discussion again.
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There’s no longer a world skills placing qualification for nationals or worlds right? Having unlimited skills run is admittedly sketchy and I really don’t like the concept, but at least the rules make is so that it’s worth not much more than bragging rights and presence. If a team is not capable of matching their performance in the 4 attempts given at states for the actual qualification (at least here in VA, not sure if it applies with other states), then it isn’t worth much.
If you want to brag, would you not want it to be under the same conditions as everyone else ?
just saying 
This is EXACTLY what I thought until I was corrected very recently. We all expect double qualifiers to be filled from the state (or region) championship skills results. If you read the qualifying document again you will see that those spots won’t be filled like every other event this season, they will be filled from the worlds skills ranking.
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Correct, that was the case for filling World spots from state/regional/nationals last year as well.
What was new is for state/regional/national spots, they would be filled from that event.
Just to be clear (because I haven’t had my coffee yet and it’s early), I think we are saying the same thing…
Double qualifiers from a local event to a state/regional/national event are filled from the event they qualify from.
Double qualifiers from a state/regional/national event to the world championship are filled from the state/regional/national skills ranking from the entire year.
For me this was unexpected, I was dubious when I first heard this said. I figured from state to Worlds would qualify from the event scores and not from the scores all year long. I do kind of wish that only the state/regional/national event scores were used, just because it made the results very clean and clear.
From an EP standpoint, we do have to explain that to teams at the beginning of the day.
Here’s my summary of the rules for double-qualifications:
When a team qualifies to States/Regionals/Nationals more than once at the same local event, or to Worlds more than once at the same Signature Event, those spots are filled from the Skills scores at that event.
(The same is true when a team wins a State/Regional/National-qualifying award at an event held in another state/region/nation.)
When a team qualifies to States/Regionals/Nationals from multiple events, or qualifies to Worlds twice from States/Regionals/Nationals, those spots are filled from the World Skills Rankings (among all teams in that state/country/group of states). For qualifying to States this uses the scores as of two weeks before States, and for qualifying to Worlds it also includes the scores from States, and presumably from any official qualifying events that were before States by less than two weeks.
i assume some of this could vary in some regions as well.
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Is it state/country/group or is it region? That is, if your state has multiple regions does the World Skills Rankings get picked through for each or does a region slot just go to whoever is on the state-wide list, even if it is a different region?
From the Criteria document.
If all spots could not be given away, or if a team qualifies multiple times, there will be spots that
need to be re-allocated. Remaining middle school spots will be given to middle school teams and
remaining high school spots will be given to high school teams. The highest, unqualified team on
the Robot Skills Challenge Score from the World Robot Skills Standings, from that region will get
the spot and be determined after the last State/Regional/Province/Nation Championship in that
region. Scores from the State/Regional/Province/Nation Championship will be included on the
World Robot Skills Standings for consideration in this process.
So, in the case of a double Worlds qualification at a Worlds-qualifying event, runs at State count. It’s subtle, but that changes things.
As to @TeamTX 's question, I’m going to assume you are from Texas. If it works the same as in California, which I will admit might not be true, although there are different State competitions, the entirety of Texas is treated as one “region”. In the case of a double-Worlds qualification, it would go to the highest unqualified team within Texas from the Skills rankings, regardless of what competition such team went to. So, if team 1234A won the tournament and Excellence from Southwest Regional High School VEX Championship, and team 5678Z was the highest-ranked skills in Texas, but went to South Texas VEX EDR, 5678Z would still get that extra slot due to the double-Qualification.
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Yes, thanks so much for correcting me! My original draft of the post was only about qualifying for States, and I forgot to change the phrase about “two weeks before States” when I revised it.
Edited to add: And I assume what you said to @TeamTX is correct, too, that each state is treated like one region, even if it has multiple State Championships. (Except maybe when multiple states combine to hold one Regional Championship, like Iowa and Nebraska - sometime soon I’ll ask someone from there how it works.)
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