Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

To date (2012 and 2013), this has never happened in MAR - all 11 winners (5 in 2012 and 6 in 2013) would have qualified for the Region Championship without the auto-bid.

2012 DCA Ranks: 2, 9, 22, 53, 55 (cutoff dropped to the 64th ranked team)
2013 DCA Ranks: 2, 6, 10, 23, 31, 38 (cutoff dropped to 65th ranked team)

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

You mean 20 could go to the NE DCMP! WHOOOOOOA! :rolleyes:
Living in New York stinks... ;)

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

This season, the Michigan and MAR numbers for Championship Qualification changed, Michigan from 18 to 27 and MAR from 12 to 14. These numbers are roughly based on the percentage of total teams in each of those region, as Steven mentioned in this thread. That is the reason we are assuming that the same thing will be done for New England.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Lol, I just saw 20 and thought NE(I fixed my typo)... but if New York hurries up and goes to districts, and this whole standardizing districts works out, 20 could come play in a NE event again :) (maybe not DCMP, but at an NE event!)

If this were the case, there would be no incentive for NE to go to districts. Why do more work just to lose WCMP slots for your teams?? Like I said, read the NE blog. I'm fairly certain there would be a riot if we got fewer than 30 slots :)

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

I have been keeping up with all thing NEFIRST, the FRC blog, and anything else vaguely district related, and I have formed an opinion based on what I know. If you know additional information that is not available to me, then of course you would have a different opinion. The blog post you are referring to is from January, and it is my understanding that the situation isn't exactly the same now as it was then. From the FRC blog post announcing the NE and Northwest districts, it seems like FIRST is trying to standardize all districts, and I think it should extend to Championship slots as well.

Furthermore, I think that the number of slots for each district system should be calculated in the same way, so if you are correct about NE getting 30, which you very well may be, I would disagree with that decision.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

I firmly disagree. I see a lot of incentive for New England to go to districts (i.e. lower cost per event, more events, a DCMP at which the best of NE compete, and more regional pride/camaraderie) that outweigh the cost of a few teams qualifying for CMP. Personally, I'd rather go to World Championships
~18% less often if it meant having the District system.

Regardless, I'd prefer to see the "slots for CMP assigned by region's percentage of total teams" applied in New England. That's the fairer way to represent who goes to CMP... that way you don't have Michigan sending a tiny percentage (like they did last year) because of misrepresentation, nor can someone else complain "Hey, that region gets to send 20% of their teams, while we only get to send 15%!"

As a sidenote, only 28 teams (3 ME, 5 NH, 2 RI, 8 MA, 10 CT) qualified in 2013 from New England, despite having 30 regional slots and those extra HoF and founding slots...

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

This. I feel like people are forgetting that just because we carry 30 tickets to championships doesn't mean that we send 30 teams. Between double-qualifying teams (at Boston 126 both won the competition and got chairmans, plus they are an original and sustaining team) and our friends from NY, its not very likely that we would consistently send 30 teams (not including prequalifiers, because they don't take up any of our slots).

Anyways, even if this wasn't the case and we really were sending less teams every year, I would still rather send 25 of very best teams than 15 of what are mostly the best teams and 15 teams that just lucked out.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Here is the link to join MAR if you are in our district reading this:
http://www.midatlanticrobotics.com/contact-form/

We hold board meetings every month or two except during build season. We hold committee meetings ALL THE TIME. Get on one of them and give your opinion.

I am sure that NE feels the same way. Don't complain, join, and do something about any problems you might see. Don't just give us the problems, propose a solution. MAR runs MAR...and we try to get better each year.

Also, I must agree with the posters on the previous page...build a ROBUST robot. In MAR we play tons of matches and have lots of off season events as well as joint community outreach events. Our robots get beat up. Our robots play DEFENSE. You have time between matches, but it is limited; you must build spare parts to just switch out. I know many budgets don't allow it, but if you have to hunt for a 1/4-20 of a certain size it takes too much time. Your teams really need to take a different mentality when going to district. You may go two or three matches without a huge break. Be prepared to fix during lunch and really plan out your day. It is a big help to look at the entire day. My drive team is not my pit team. They used to be, but now it is better that we have a dedicated pit team like in NASCAR. It is overwhelming for your drive team to be on the go non-stop for 10 hours. They need down time or they get burned out.

And...you are competing more. You need to adjust your homework, project, schedule as well. Discuss it upfront with your teachers. Tell them you are gone the entire weekend. Use the time during the week before your competition wisely. Have your mentors schedule days where you are just doing homework and projects, not robots. I get frustrated when my team tells me they can't come to robots because they didn't do their homework and I find out they were playing videogames for four hours. I don't watch TV from Jan to May. There just isn't time and honestly...you just wasted an hour you can never get back. And really, does Game of Thrones truly affect your life?

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

I think there is something important to consider in the above, but I'm having trouble understanding what you mean by sending "15 of what are mostly the best teams and 15 teams that just lucked out." Can you please explain this a little further? Thanks!

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

I think he was referring to teams such as 2nd picks by 1 seed alliances when he said "teams that just lucked out". Although I will agree that a winning allliance is almost never the 3 best teams at an event, I wouldn't go so far as to say they just got lucky.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

Yea, I was partly referring to the 2nd pick, which I kind of agree doesn't simply luck out, they have to play well once they get onto that winning alliance in order to make it win. But in 9/10 cases, they are just an average robot at a competition who found themselves in a good place and did what they needed to do.

The other part is rookie allstar. Sometimes, they are really a great team that deserved the award and to go to champs. But other times, they just happened to go to a competition with few/no other rookies, and didn't necessarily do anything special to win the award.

Also, when I said 15 of mostly the best teams, I was implying that sometimes the regional model leaves out some really good teams (every year we see the "best teams who didn't make champs" thread). But from what I understand from the district model, this happens far less often.

So I might of exaggerated a little bit when I said that. It's probably more along the lines of 22 teams who are mostly the best and 8 who are either average or lucky. Still worse in my opinion than 25 of the best teams. But I know other people have other opinions on it, and with good reasons to back their opinions, so I respect whatever disagreement people may have with this.

Re: Official: New England Districts in 2014
 

I for one welcome our new robot overlords...:p

Ah, sorry folks. No excuse.
In a sense, FRC is our overlord (and we its serfs) for 1/3 of our lives, and so now I 'get it'. Thanks for your kind grace.