Re: What do you think
 

This happened to us, and I dont really have much sympathy, because when that happened, you needed to go out and make everyone aware of what happened, about your bot's capabilities, etc.

In 2002 at Nationals, we were seeded between 4th and 7th in the Einstein Division the entire competition. In our last qualifying match, we were up against team 16, which had an amazing ball collecting robot. at the time, we were ranked 7th. We ended up losing the match 48-52, and got knocked back to a tie for 11th, which Team 93 won, and we got dropped to 12th. Had we won that match, we would have been seeded 1st or 2nd. We thought we were going to be picked by a certain team, but due to some breakdown of communication or something, they picked team 10, which didnt exist. We almost moved up into the top 8, but ended up being one pick away.

We knew our robot was one of the best single goal robots in our division, and we knew for sure we were a lot better than many of the picked robots. There are 2 possible reasons we didnt get picked by someone else.

1) We didnt fit the alliance captain's strategy (We would have complemented at least one alliance, Im sure)

2)We failed to make ourselves known to the top 8 teams and the teams likely to move into the top 8.

The real culprit here was #2. We did nothing to make our name known to the other 7 teams in the top 8, since we figured the team we performed well with earlier, and had been planning to pick had we been in the top 8 would pick us, we didnt make any effort to show other teams what we could do.

At the end of the day, I had just as much fun anyways, and was happy we made it so far after having a non functional robot at SVR.

It isn't all about how you place in the competition guys. We placed dead last, with a record of 0-8-1 at Sacramento this weekend, and I had a blast!

Cory

Re: What do you think
 

This would have been a very good idea. We usually do this, but the match lost and the alliance pickings were a full 5 minutes apart at the most, so teams already had choosen and sent their representitives up on stage, so this would not have changed much. That why there should be a break in between the end of qualification matches and pickings and no showing of ranks (also we were going to be moved to first by winning that match but our partner didnt hang for the first time in the comp, and the only time. just our luck! We would have also gotten lots of qp 115 of it but..thanks to the other team we got screwed. What ever tough its over now Just trying to make everyone aware so it DOESNT happen to them)

Re: What do you think
 

Ben, i know it sucks, but please stop whinning about this. Although this really isnt fun, its life.

i hope that in the future they can make the system better, but if everything is perfect, we wont be prepared for it.

Re: What do you think
 

Does any one have any ideas on how to FIX this problem that us and many teams have had in the past? Also, many teams will encounter this in the future if it is not fixed! So ideas are greatly appreciated

Re: What do you think
 

Yes -Dean Kamen knows how to fix the problem:

from last years kickoff meeting: "at some point in the next six weeks you are going to start feeling like you are involved in a robot building contest. Then you are in serious trouble" -DK

the fix for the problem is to not take the competion so seriously - you got to test your robot against 30 to 60 other teams for 3 days and see how well your design worked - that is the purpose of the event - not to see who can build the best robot in your area

if the competition was meant to be a serious contest there would be serious prizes - like scholarships and large grants of money to every person on the winning team - and the contest would be one on one - no alliances - so the best robot would be the one that wins - and you would not see teams helping each other during the build season or in the pits, or encouraging schools to start new teams - because people would be focused on the prize and would not want more competition to beat to have to win it.

The fix is to not take the games so seriously - its intended to be fun - to be a learning experience about engineering and teamwork

the only way to fix the problem like you want to would be to turn FIRST into something else.

If you go home from a FIRST competition feeling like "we got screwd" then you dont "get it".

Re: What do you think
 

i think someone metinoed about a top 8 team being picked in the second round... that was us 121... one of the other alliance captains tried to pick us after we had already picked another team... strange indeed... and it was just mass confusion... *shurg*

Re: What do you think
 

I don't know if there is anyway that this could be considered a flaw with FIRST. It is the responsibility of teams to know who would be good partners for them, and prepare themselves. As a team, we make fliers about our strengths and strategies well before any events and have them available to give out to teams. If nothing else, other teams can look and see if you really do what you say you'll do.

Teams also need to go through all the teams at the competition and rank them in terms of who they think is their best options for partners. Just because someone is ranked highly doesn't mean a lower seeded team isn't better suited as a partner, as has been mentioned several times in this thread. We consider many elements when choosing partners, including but not limited to their performance in objectives we see important, their reliability, friendliness/'good to work with', etc. As Ken said, it's about having fun so you want to pick a team you want to work with and can form a real team with.

It's part of the game, and we've all been disappointed before. Teams will prepare as much as they see fit and pick who they pick. You just have to accept that it's what they think is the best, cheer on through the finals, or spend the extra time working on your robot in the pit to make it better.