Personally I think once a team is gone,. their number should be retired ... like say, team #2 was a team until thius year... I think they give teams 3 years before they will use thier number, but ... I think once a team is gone, their number should be retired, especially if their number is really low!!

:: throws in $.02 ::

- Katie

At first i disagreed with this, but as I think about it, if Team 2 retires, some rookie team shouldnt be given that number, and veteran teams who have been around for a long time should not be bumped up.

simple solution
 

Instead of extending to four digits, simply increase the number of one-character numbers. If we add the numbers A, C, E, F (easily displayable) that should provide enough new numbers to last at least two or three years.

- Patrick

Haha,
The new rookie team 47A
"The Emergency Reserve Chief Delphi, when just one 47 isn't enough"

Re: simple solution
 

Interesting thought. What if they reassigned numbers to keep it in the three digits, but then assigned a letter to say how long they have competed? For example, Beach Bot would be 330E. I assume that someday they will have to go into the four digits, but if old teams don't keep coming back, there are going to be a lot of empty numbers. so they may as well reassign old numbers that haven't been used in several years.

If they are going to go into four (lets just say) characters, why not use numbers? Addind a letter would just make it more complicated than having 4 digit teams.

But, I personally don't see anything wrong with re-assigning numbers from teams that have left the competition. Maybe use up the 'original' numbers first, but why not re-use old ones - at least if that way they could avoid 4 numbers.

Re-Numbering
 

Personally, I don't give a flying potato if they renumber. In fact, I'm all for it, as long as that fabled new hotel at Disney is opened and they eliminate the even/odd/points championship qualifying system. But if the horrid system is not disbanded, current even and odd teams can be reassigned even and odd numbers as they had this year. Going by the time-date stamp on a team's original registration ticket, numbers are assigned 001-***, older teams acquiring lower numbers. A system of numbering can be derived to tell the age of a team by number as well. I can see that you older teams have become attached to your numbers, and a change of them after five years or so can seem odd, but just a few years ago renumbering occurred on a regular basis. I embrace renumbering.

<----- is quite fond of team number

::hums James Bond theme to self::

The irony of all this is that no one here on these forums will have to worry about having a 4 digit team number...lol

Letters would be easy to display on the controller. So why don't they just write the team number in hexadecimal on the controller. There would be 4096 hexadecimal combinations in the 3 digits that way. There are already 12 binary digits (4096 combinations ... coincidence?) on the dip switchs for setting team number. The B and D would have to be written in lower case (b and d) so they didn't look like 8 and 0. Teams could keep their decimal numbers and who looks at the controllers anyway. The team number on the controller is just for radio communication. I'm sure the programmers on the teams could figure out how to program it.
Let's see, 365 in hexadecimal is ... 16D (16d is what it would look like on the controller)

Did anyone notice that in the championship event program (not the regular FIRST program), the letter from Dean says that "next year, all new teams will have four-digit numbers?" I guess that clears up part of the situation.

I think they should renumber. All the teams who have hosted a championship in their gym should get the single digit numbers in order of the year they hosted. After that I don't care. :-) Just so long as we go from 811 to 2. :)

I say they just let it go to 4 digits....and I'm sure whatever new controller system comes along ( oh boy! oh boy! ) will accomidate this idea. But fitting 247 on the back of our baseball jersey's was tough enough already!

no, the numbers shouldn't be redone, they can just go to a 4th digit and keep adding