Next Year's Junkyard Challenge

[vofbassist]

That's what I'm hoping. Mission Possible is where you have to build a Rube Goldberg like device, right?

[croman74]

That's what I'm hoping. Mission Possible is where you have to build a Rube Goldberg like device, right?

Yeah. We did that for a project in 7th grade. It was really annoying because we didn't have much time to build it. In the end the teacher had to slightly change the grading rubric to bring up some grades.

[vofbassist]

That's wicked. If that happens, my coach already has the two students who'll be doing that for our team.

[croman74]

Rube Goldbergs are sweet if you can get them to work well.

[DeltaHat]

JYC will be a B division event next year. After that, I'm not sure. There is a movement from waaaay up on high to bring Mission back, but its not the mission of our fond memories. They want to bring back a neutered mission. They want it simple, yet hard; easy, yet complicated. I don't hold the event author responsible. He has been given a sisyphean task.

Mission was pulled because it became too complex for its own good. The event required at least a season's worth of work just to do poorly at. The best teams trained for generations. The problem with the event is that it didn't scale well. At the regional level, the event was too much for 90% of the teams who never left their regional tournament. At the national level, there was always a tie for first.

If mission comes back, i fear it will be short lived and a shadow of its former self.

[Flavorflav]

I remember the last time Mission ran at the B level in our region, eight out of about 45 teams entered. You are allowed to drop four events, and everyone dropped mission. I love it, but it takes much longer to produce than virtually any other event, as Delta Hat said.

To get back to your original question, DH, I would make the B Junkyard challenge comparatively simple if I were you, more like the old boat challenge than the coin sorter (which was fine for C, but a bit much for B). Personally, I thought that the preparation for two different challenges was the best part of this event, and they gutted that this year by announcing which challenge would run at regionals and (in NY) at states. I would suggest two simple but quite different challenges, such as a tower and a ball launcher or a clock, and leave them both in for regionals and states. Also, I think you need to simplify the scoring - the NY state supervisors were apparently totally unable to understand the formula. It would be also be helpful if you would make in clear in the rules whether or not tape is considered a form of glue. Lastly, I would either do away with or place limits on the Mystery Material, although with a simpler challenge the importance of that diminishes a bit.

[nejanimb]

I thought Mission Possible was an awesome event. It required so much creativity and hard work - no two teams, it always seemed, would ever bring the same device. I was never part of the mission team with my B division team, but I worked closely with those that were, and the stuff they were doing was so fun. It was also a great event because it was an event that you had to work for. True, several of the top teams could get near-perfect scores, but in order to do that they had to put so much work into it. This just makes tiebreakers all the more important. It was hard, but it separated teams well. Perhaps lower barriers to entry (It has to be possible to build a legal device that can complete the challenge in tier 1 in under 5 hours, I think) would be good, but it's important that any Olympiad event rewards good teams.

[dudeincolorado]

I remember when mission was an event. The kid who did it spent every living moment trying to improve it. It took over his life for 6 months. It was amazing but 6 months! That's alot of time.

[Dark Sabre]

I guess I should mention a JYC idea or two before I rant on non-participation in building events and Mission...

Shouldn't require any robotics to work.

I like the challenge of measuring some quantity with homebuilt equipment, but am not sure where you could take it beyond mass and temperature.

Measuring the pressure of a basketball without a commercial gauge or a manometer
Measure the CFM of an air (120mm computer fan) or water flow (1/4" tubing and a 12V pump) - both would be hard for an event sup to measure himself with complete accuracy without equipment
Measure the efficiency of a motor/pump/other system
Determine the mass of a [ball bearing/marble/plastic ball/other sphere] kinetically (no scales/balances/volume displacement and no electronics)

Not sure where to take the mystery material...the people I talked to were terrified by it at first, but once they figured out how to easily mitigate it, they were able to ignore it. If you specify what exactly the MM could be, you would have to do something to make using it harder. If you don't specify what it could be, I don't know how you would make it harder. I guess one possibility would be to make the mystery material hard and optional...like one of the upper mission bonuses...ideally keep teams from simply using it structurally or otherwise mitigating it.

---

Not terribly surprisingly, I'm pro-Mission C just because I have such fond memories of it.
The ability of teams to make entry-level Missions is always brought up, but I don't have much sympathy for teams that don't try events.
Like for Mission the only materials you needed to recieve 60% of the base points:

A toaster (from goodwill for $5?)
6 light switches ($6?)
a ball of natural string (probably own)
a roll of fishing line (probably own)

That's all you need to get 3 mechanical transfers, 3 chemical transfers, 3 heat transfers, and 3 electrical transfers. The task itself was usually quite simple too.
EMS was always a little harder for entry level teams, since there isn't a way to do it without some very basic knowledge of like a photodetector circuit.
The bonuses just let teams differentiate themsevles, they were not required, so didn't prevent people from competing.

If you didn't do any EMS or bonuses, you should have been able to score 540/890 on the last year of MPC for under $20.

It is the same deal with Scrambler or EV, an entry level vehicle can get a lot of points. It won't medal in most regionals, but you also can build and test in a single weekend.

At one of the regionals I judged, less than half the teams entered a scrambler. Of the competitors, there was only one who had no construction or run penalties...so they won. The base level for competing in any of the building events is pretty easy and cheap. I don't understand why people don't enter qualified, working devices but I also don't know why everyone wouldn't love mission unconditionally.

Yeah, I got stung by the 'tie for first at nationals' part, but I can't really complain since I have yet to come up with a tiebreaker I thought was unarguably better.
I'd like to see Mission come back as what it was, but I guess that's unlikely to happen. But unless it really, really isn't Mission, I'll have an excuse to go help at Nats

[croman74]

That's really stupid that other teams didn't enter a vehicle. It's not that hard to make. Had a couple of teams entered devices that could go at least have the track that didn't have any violations/penalties, they could've done pretty well.

[dudeincolorado]

box with markers shoved into it?

[maggymay]

I've got to come up with ideas for what next years challenges for Junkyard will be. Do you have anything you think could make an interesting and challengeing challenge?

How about...
Every competitor-team had to come to events with the exact same items (and truly un-assembled) and invent something from a list of possible devices at the event
(I know, probably too hard to police or something, but it would be awesome to see what different things people come up with when they start with exactly the same items.)

Have a pre-published list of mystery objects available, especially if JyC is only a Div B event for next season

[nejanimb]

This last one sounds pretty much like Mystery Architecture. Very cool event... but also very hard to prepare for.

[DeltaHat]

I don't fully understand why there isn't room in SO for both mission and JYC. There are extremely different events, focusing on very different engineering skills. For some reason, some people insist on seeing them as mutually exclusive.

[vofbassist]

That would be cool to have both. Along with bringing Robot Ramble back so I can have a chance at redeaming myself.