Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

[quote=Michael Hill;1400561]My guess, the same reason they have always been excluded. Mothership FIRST says so.

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

I do love how FIRST didn't like the district idea originally forcing Michigan to be an island in a sea of Regionals, and now they are pushing to get everyone to districts and are still scared to let everyone try it out. I really feel that FIRST should let teams decide if they want to opt into a existing district system or not from season to season.

Eventually either everyone will want to opt in and we will have a giant district for all of FIRST or everyone will opt out and the experiment will be over, the two systems have enough issues coexisting that we need to resolve it sooner rather than later.

EDIT: Also I think that Indiana (and by extension all districts that may develop in the future) should not be a part of inter-district play for their first year.

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

More than 15 I think, just check how many district teams went to regionals last year and increase the number due to the lower cost.

I can think of 7 FiM teams, off memory, that went to regionals last year.

This will definitely be a trial year to see what shakes out.

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

Does anyone have hard data compiled on districts capacity and how many were filled/how manyopen spots there were?

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

If anyone does, it would be Jim Zondag

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

It's very simple. Money. Why would FIRST allow you, as a regional team, to compete in districts, when they will lose $4000 every time that happens?

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

MAR has 7 events with 36 slot capacity. Assuming growth of 6 teams, that makes 117 teams needing 234 of the 252 slots available for 18 open slots.

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

More specifically, the option to spend $1000 on a district reduces the incentive to spend $4000 on a second regional, since regional teams will likely do this instead of, rather than in addition to, their second/third regionals.

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

I'm not smarter than the average bear and I'd tell you that we could shuffle our team up to Pennsylvania/New Jersey for Week 1 and 2 to play around with the robot for half the price if we could. Sure we wouldn't get a bid to champs, but we'd get 12 hours of unbag time and 24 matches, which are the gold and crude oil of FRC.

So FIRST wouldn't want people stampeding for districts they don't get financial benefit from when they can lock the sorry saps in the regional system into a second regional.

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

Convince? I'm already hooked.

Can you explain this a bit more? Because they shouldn't have to deal with teams coming into their districts? I could certainly see this making it harder for some Indiana teams to make it to their district championship, but if the encroaching teams spread out over the district events (taking what events they could get), wouldn't they have about an equal force on each Indiana team?

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

I really like these changes. I'm sure MAR teams will be happy to play with some new faces and friends from other districts.

That being said, I do wish regional teams could have the opportunity as well, especially in the case of places like NY, where it would actually make more sense to come down (or up) than it would be for a team from, say, Michigan.

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

I'll take baby steps in the right direciton over no steps at all.

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

This.

I've proposed the idea in threads before, but essentially the idea is to have teams get acclimated to the transition themselves and build their own culture (ie. from experience, districts in NE feel different than districts in MAR).

Of course, Indiana (might?) is different than all other district transitions so far due to the number of teams and number of events; how many open spots they'll have I can't say, but I assume it'll be small.

Also, when I've mentioned that idea before, in my mind, that was in a situation where OOD play would count for points (something I would expect a few years down the road).

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

Or it might just be because they're testing the waters on this...

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 

With 54-56 teams and only 40 spots per event the number will be very small.