Where is the Third Pilot?
 

I'm sure I just missed it, but I can't seem to find what the third pilot is supposed to do.

One scenario would be that they just sit out, but they would still need to have a badge, meaning they would be allowed in the arena.

Do they stay by the drive station and watch? Then, do they function as a Drive Coach or a Driver/HP?

Any help would be great, as I'm sure others have this question.

Re: Where is the Third Pilot?
 

According to section 4.5 you may not have three pilots. A team must do something else in line with Table 4-3 with their fifth person or not use their fifth person.

Re: Where is the Third Pilot?
 

Every alliance is allocated 1 coach per team and 4 students per team, or 12 students in total. I imagine the breakdown would be:

6 drivers (2 per team)
2 pilots
3 players in the loading lane/ operating loading zone chutes
1 player handling overflow from the opponents loading lane

Re: Where is the Third Pilot?
 

Near the end of 4.5
What I am interested in is the second part of your question. If the Pilot is not in the match but had to queue (for instance at districts where you may not know who's pilots are being used for the match before queue time) then what do they do if they are not used. Maybe they function like safety captains do during elims at champs and sit off on the sidelines during matches...

Re: Where is the Third Pilot?
 

Our team has come to take it as not having a designated "pilot" and a designated human player, but rather two human players per team, one of which could potentially become the "pilot."

This means that once two human players from the alliance are on the airship, there are four remaining human players, two at your teams' drivers stations and two others on the opposite side, putting the balls back onto the field.

Re: Where is the Third Pilot?
 

Table 4.3 in Section 4.5 shows the maximum number of positions per TEAM.
Each team has a maximum of
-- 1 coach
-- 4 drivers
-- 4 human players
-- 1 pilot
You can't have all of them, or there'd be 10 people on your team.

All your non-coaches could be drivers, if that's what you want. Or they could all be human players, if your robot wasn't going to move or wasn't on the field.

For that matter, you don't need to have a coach, but then you're down to only 4 team members, because anyone wearing the coach button has to act as the coach and can't be one of the other positions.

Given that most teams have 2 drivers, the other two would most likely be
-- 1 human player and 1 pilot
or
-- 2 human players
If you are the alliance that doesn't get the pilot, then you'll have 2 human players.

Re: Where is the Third Pilot?
 

Or, if your robot were fully autonomous, like in FLL.

(Just couldn't resist, as we talked about this possibility today. We don't think any teams will be doing it, though...)

Re: Where is the Third Pilot?
 

It seems that the alliance as a whole would choose which 2 teams would supply a pilot for that match. The one team who doesn't send their human player for that match would just have an extra human player who would (I think)just sit to the side. There's only 2 people in the airship for the entire alliance.

Re: Where is the Third Pilot?
 

Pretty much. Section 4.5 says that during qualifications, the default is that the PILOTS come from teams in Stations 1 and 2. A team can cede it's PILOT position to the team in Station 3.

In playoffs, the ALLIANCE CAPTAIN decides who will be PILOTS.

Since you can have up to 4 HUMAN PLAYERS, the team who does not have a PILOT gets to use that team member as an extra HUMAN PLAYER (or DRIVER).