Soooo just some thoughts
 

I've only been involved with FIRST for 2 years, my junior and senior year in high school, 2 of the 3 years that team # 1895 has existed. I'll probably come back a little bit as alumni to give some pointers to next years team and such, but to be honest, I have seen some things I don't like in the actual games....

But before I go on, I have many more positive points (in fact WAY WAY WAY more) than I have negative points

First thing on my mind is "mentor built" bots....

In my opinion, this sort of ruins the game... the mentor is supposed to be there to mentor, not build the robot. You have mentors that have way more experience in engineering than your everyday FIRST robotics high school student. The student is supposed to gain the experience, not let the mentor do the work, give a quick run down of how it works, and then go do the next part of the robot. How is this helping the student. Our team is focused on the students building the bot, while the mentor gives tips. You go to these competitions, and we look at some of these rookie teams, and we sit there and think to ourselves, there is no possible way just the students built that work of art. I don't know if any of you all have seen this, but it just bothers me that they get that advantage.

The only other thing that has bothered me the past two years has been the ranking system. A team could have the best engineered bot in the entire game, but be matched up with other robots that impede their ability to score points and be last in rank. A team could have a not so up to par bot but rely on their partners to give them an awesome rank. At first I thought well everybody must be thinking the same thing I am, the ranking system really doesn't determine how well your bot really does. Your performance as a whole is basically decided upon by your team mates. This is a random selection, so it's hard to counter it. But it turns out from my view (@ annapolis) that every team doesn't see this. The top 8 teams were given the choice of alliances, and only 2 bots outside of the top 24 were selected. I saw much better bots than some of those inside the top 24 that were impeded by team performance but were outstanding performers. So I thought that maybe the bots should be graded on their individual points, assists, and team wins. That way you wouldn't have such a ridiculous drop in rank if your team loses.

These are just my thoughts.... I personally think that FIRST could come up with a better ranking system.

I just want to hear YOUR thoughts, am I being completely unreasonable here? Have I missed a point or two? I appreciate comments from anybody regardless of whether or not they agree.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

I'm going to give you a tip--NEVER bring up "mentor-built vs. student-built". Do a quick search on that, and you'll see why. The short of the matter is that not many care one way or the other, provided inspiration happens. You'll see the long when you do the search.

Now, on to the ranking system...
I might be willing to bet that some of the teams in the top 8 didn't have scouting crews. If they did, better robots might have been selected. Or, the better robots you saw might not have complemented the teams doing the picking. Both happen. It might also have to do with marketing, or lack thereof. (Note: I hope you aren't referring to your own team as one of the better robots unless you actually were.)

Your proposed solution would actually be more work for the scorers and lead to a decrease in teams working together. With limited scoring objects; all one team has to do is deny another the _______ and they get an increase in their ranking. But that isn't what FIRST is about, is it? Oh, and the every-man-for himself game format was already tried between 1992 and 1998. Seems that higher-seeded robots at the end of Friday kept getting defended. Collusions was suspected, but not proved. So it became required, and the alliance system was born.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

Indeed you are correct about my proposed idea, I didn't think about it that way. But even though teamwork is involved, potentially awesome robots could be totally knocked out of the way due to bad match ups. I'm not saying our bot was fantastic in anyway, I saw absolutely brilliant robots out there that our robot couldn't even compete with. In no way am I saying our robot is amazing, that wouldn't be fair. But my point still does stand, your team's match up can totally kill your performance in the competition. I'm not trying to be a pompous $@#$@#$@# here, I'm saying there is a lot of hours put into these robots and it's not exactly fair that your bot doesn't have the same chance as other random match ups. I would vote for more matches to let the ranks even out a bit more to be honest.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

If your alliance members during qualifications have affected your performance as an individual team, then you've already failed. The reason I say this is because in order to have their performance totally screw you over, you must have decided to rely on other teams. By that nature alone, the robot wouldn't be elim worthy. A lot of people are going to disagree with me on this, but here's how I see it:

In order to be a high power competitive team, you need to be able to do everything on your own, with no outside help, and be able to do it FAST with very little driver influence. Until a team can find this niche, you won't see them on Einstein.




(note: This response is without having looked at your team's robot. So please, if anything is insulting directly towards your team, it was made as a blanket statement, and not towards you/your team individually.)

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

Indeed, that matter was addressed in 2005 when the alliances were expanded from 2 teams to 3.

There are many flaws in the ranking system, but we don't have an infinite amount of time nor ability to pair every team with every other team against every other team.

Hence, we learn to live with the system, compete our hardest, and roll with the punches luck throws us. If you are an excellent robot, you WILL be in the eliminations, regardless of your rank. In 2002, 469 was in the bottom 10 of the ranks in their division, but was picked early.

Also, if you look at this from a "global" perspective - do the rankings matter at the end of the season? Will you remember every win, every loss, every score you put up there? Or will you take home some hard-earned lessons about teamwork, cooperation, and inspiration?

-Alex

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

i don't want to get bashed so i won't post my comments on this on CD. I don't think anyone will really care 2 years from now... because there probably will be another thread and im SURE i've spoken on this before...

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

I have also thought about that. But when your matched against 3 extremely high scoring robots, and you have two extremely low scoring robots, how can your rely on your robot to win that match. You'd have to have an extremely powerful robot with an extremely experienced team. This is hard to come by. I do understand that the entire idea behind this competition is teamwork, but in a way you have to rely on your team mates. My point isn't to have a single robot based game, I'm saying that the ranking system in itself relies too heavily on the outcome of the match rather than a mix of performance of your bot, and the outcome of the match. IE, let's say you do 60% of the scoring in the match. Your other team mates do the other 40%. Yes you've done a fantastic job!! Awesome! But when you look at the ranks, you've all gone down nearly the same amount. What you've just done has no impact other than the fact that you lost overall. This really made our team feel like crap.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

I don't know that I've actually written this down before, but I figure this is as good a time as any. I just came to realize this sometime last year, and it has helped me come to peace with a lot of things.

There is no mandate as to who is supposed to be building these robots. If you have any question about this, you should review Dave Lavery's comments from the 2008 kickoff. Because of this, there have arisen two competing philosophies with respect to how we are supposed to meet the overarching goal of Inspiration. One school of thought is that students get excited about engineering by doing it, and thus saying, "wow, I want to do this when I grow up". The other is that students get excited about engineering by watching real engineers at work and saying, "wow, I want to do that when I grow up".

I feel pretty strongly about which method works better, but I've accepted that other people have different opinions, and that there may be benefits either way. So long as the students are actually being inspired, then these teams should be applauded for their efforts.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

More matches is something we all wish for. Time is our enemy. Just be glad that the "Algorithm of Death" isn't in use this year.

Trust me, I know about the killer matchups. My old team always seems to draw one of the worst schedules at the Los Angeles Regional. (Translation--you're the only good team on your alliance, and you're facing 968 and 980 in the same match. Or 69 and 980. Without the 2007 algorithm. Even 330 can't do that too well normally. One-on-one, yes. Not 2 or 3 on one.) Or something would happen and it would be a one-on-three. Stuff like this happens. The only thing you can really do is play the best game you can. If you do well, some team that's been doing their scouting will notice, even if you don't make the top 8. If teams haven't been doing their scouting, help them.

Strength of schedule is already built into the ranking system--It's the RS column. (QS= Win-Loss-Tie, RS=strength of schedule, and if those can't solve a ranking dispute, the higher scorer wins.)

Simply put, good scouting trumps the ranking system any day. Bad scouting is using the ranking system to do your scouting.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

I disagree with just about every word of this. While you should build a self-reliant robot, but calling a robot a failure if it fails to do everything in the game is asinine. Try telling every ramp robot from 2007 a failure because it relied on its alliance partners for points!

Is a high-power, competitive team the only answer?

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

Winning isn't what scouting teams see. A good scouting system will analyze how YOU play the game, how many times YOU score, how YOU drive, and nothing else. Honestly, most of the high power teams have such a complex scouting algorithm set up, it's pretty impressive to see how it all works out. If your robot can perform, then make it do so; you'll be chosen if you can actually score, and score well.

About the rankings: They don't mean much. If you're good, you will be chosen. The high ranked teams usually have complex scouting systems, and so if you perform, you'll get picked for elims. If not, you won't. It's that simple.


As for my previous post, yes, it is fairly insulting. However, by "do everything," I'm trying to get across that the bots that you will see winning have more capabilities then the ones that you will see losing. Taking last year as an example, teams like Jesters, 254/968, and other very strong teams could do everything, and well, won.

I'm not calling every robot that fails to do all game aspects a total failure. If you'll read again what I said, you need to do whatever you do, or everything you do, on your own, without help.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

Also, top teams with good scouts know who to pick and who complements them the best, even in the loooow rankings (a la regional champions 4 in LA in '06 and '07, 294 in San Diego in '08)

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

Indeed you are correct sir, which is why halfway through that competition when I realized our rank would be stuck very low because of bad match ups, that I could depend on good scouting to pick the best bots. So while watching the alliance selections, I decided to count. I counted two robots outside of the top 24 that were selected. I believe that there were far more suited bots for the top 8 than those in the top 24. This is why I have such little faith in the majority of teams scouting abilities. I did see some awesome scouting by some teams, but not too many.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

Basic economics will tell you that if good teams regularly go unpicked, and poor-er teams get regularly picked, some day some team will boost up its scouting team, put together a killer alliance and win everything. The fact that this hasn't happened yet leads me to think that either the seeding system works so well that the top seeded teams do not really need exceptional partners to win, or that the scouting teams actually do a good job. Either way, this goes against your claim(s).

Also, teams shouldn't design their robot around the alliance. Knowing that a random process will get you your partner, you should design a robot that can win on its own. The fact that some robots go undefeated through the qualification matches either defies statistics or proves that a good robot will not be hurt by those matches. Also, a great robot that hasn't seeded too well (ex. 217 in the 2006 Det. regional) because they missed some matches or ran into technical trouble _will_ get picked in the alliance selection process.

Finally, as far as the whole mentor/student participation thing goes. It really leads nowhere. Many teams are mentor driven that swear they are not, many teams are not who are said to be, and there really is no right or wrong there. It bothers me however to hear people behind the scenes saying "team XXX is 100% mentor built" or "there is no way students did this". Don't assume, you would be surprised. I know for a fact that many of the top tier team see many of their students participate _heavily_ in the design process. I've seen entire systems on a robot put under the responsibility of one student (with the help of other kids to build and as much mentor help as he may ask for obviously...).

That is not to say that FIRST is perfect. Many things are wrong with it and enumerating them will not help because many of you will probably disagree with me.

Francois

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

I know for a fact (since I helped implement it this year) that most of my team's scouting is entirely statistics based. We have a scout per robot on the field, and it's their job to record the statistics.

For example this years categories are:

Lines in hybrid, balls in hybrid, laps in teleop, herds in teleop, hurdles in teleop/balls placed at end, alliance score, their score. and then a place for notes.

If one team puts up 80 points by themselves in a match, that's really impressive...less so if we find out that none of the opposing robots were moving.

I'm fairly sure that if other teams scouting systems aren't exactly like this, then they're pretty darn close. They look at the bot as a singular unit instead of their alliance.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

After reading jgannon's post about mentor built robots vs student built robots, I do agree with that. I never looked at it that way. I just thought that the majority of the experience gained would be through hands on work rather than watching. I do believe this is a one sided opinion though so I'll take EricH's advice and not go any further into that discussion. But back to the ranking system. Would it not be easier to have a reliable ranking system that brings the top bots forward and reduces the amount of scouting time needed to actually look past the misleading ranks? Because I didn't see much scouting going on to be insanely honest with you all. I'm not saying that our bot deserved this or that, that's not what I'm getting at. I'm getting at the fact that the ranking system shouldn't depend on the outcome of the total match when 1 robot on the entire team did the entirety of the scoring. Although many in this forum have claimed that there are very complex scouting methods out there, I just didn't see it at annapolis this year.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

Hey, Craig, you coming to L.A.? If not, come soon. I still remember the year when one team let TWO other teams use their pick list because those teams didn't have one.:yikes:

By the way, on the mentors/students debate (to stop it before it starts):
Some good discussion on an extreme case
More...
Still more...
If you want more reading...
And finally, one of the best threads on this topic I've seen.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

Hm. Were those potent teams? I have yet to see that happen around me... Then again, I may have missed it.

Also, as far as the whole not seeing much scouting going on, most of the time you won't see it. For the team I used to be with, it was 6 people with clipboards up in the stands, just watching and writing. Then, that night, all the data was compiled and scored. You wouldn't see it happen, but the results would be a very smexy list with scores, ranks, and all other data about a team, with a pick list on the side.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

No. Other than the one that allowed the others to use the list. (Last year, there were some obviously unprepared teams and one that prepared hastily.)

You got that right. My old team did the same thing. I'm trying to develop that for my current team.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

You don't have to rely on other team's scouting abilities. So you did poorly on qualifications, go out and meet other teams and market your robot. Make posters of your robot's abilities and hand them out personally to every team. Also, record your own statistics and show it to other teams. Get your team's name out.

In my opinion there are some teams with poor scouting systems that may not look at every robot's abilities. These teams are the teams that just view FIRST ranking method. Most would be grateful if you made their job easier for them by proving your robot deserves to be selected. However, make sure not to be overly aggressive.

Drawing from personal experience (in FVC) last year, there were 99 competing teams and we were ranked 94th due to some controller/pairing problems. However we decided to market ourselves to the top 8 and ended up in an alliance and performed very well. If we didn't market ourselves, there would have been no chance of us being selected (as far as I know, the next worse seeded team was ranked in the 60s).

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

One of the biggest improvements our team made was consistent scouting. It took some butt-kicking (by the student leaders) and some consistent pressure (by the student leaders) and a vastly improved scouting system (again by the students). That resulted in the students 100% handling our alliance selections.

This year has been a "break through" year for the team. We lost a lot of seniors last year and a lot of underclassman have had to step up and learn to be leaders. It's never a pretty process, but they've been up to the challenge and done a good job.

Probably the best feeling I got was when they actually un-invited the mentors to the alliance picking. They felt they could do a good job - and they did!

The point of all this? Not one bit of it was robot related. While the kids DID build probably 90% of our robot (even learned to weld aluminum, etc), that is actually the smallest and least important part of what they've done this year. Anyone can learn to drill and tap. Learning to be a leader is something that few people can do, and it's tremendously exciting to see it happen.

Go Team 1718!!!!!!

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

I think in some ways there is a very important point about what I see as an intentional design of the ranking system and the alliance system.

We often talk about first as building life skills. Some folks will crucify me and others will love me, but FIRST is not about the robot. The robot is a means to an end, not the end.

Is the ranking system flawed from the perspective of "the best robots should be in the elimination matches"? Yes, definitely. Does the ranking system provide a situation that is similar to real life? Yes, definitely.

When you're in elementary and middle school, performance is all about you as an individual student. Even in High school to some respect. In college, at least with engineering, and the "real world" individial performance means much less. Every day you will thrust into situations where you must rely on working with a team of folks you may or may not know. Who may or may not be able (or will) to do what they claim. In the end though, the team performance will be all that matters. This is something the alliance and ranking system simulates beautifully. I work for a large defense contractor where we are teamed on some programs with companies that we compete against on others. It's the nature of our business. Teams are just the nature of engineering in general.

In addition, the best design is not always the successful one. A group that can market a design that is good enough can often be more successful then an extermely well designed but poorly markets product. This is why scouting and marketing your team are very important. There are other factors that go into alliance selection as well, such as the ability to work as a team player. I know teams that will choose a slightly less capable team that is easier to work with and is able to be a team-player over an excellent team that does whatever it feels like.

I think the ranking system puts a large emphasis on team work, strategy, and being able to think on your feet, that an individual perforance based ranking system would not.

Personally, it is things like this that set FIRST apart from other similar competitions and enables students to be better prepared for college and beyond.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

I have to say here that, and please dont take this the wrong way, in the heat of competition some things can happen and cause some frustration afterwards that lingers for a while.

This sounds a bit like one of these kinds of posts. Yes it is unfortunate to not be picked for the eliminations, but honestly you have to trust the people you've never met, the scouters of other teams.

In arizona this year we didnt receive our robot until 3pm thursday afternoon, and we had a lot of work to do on it. We decided to forego our morning matches on friday so that our robot was fully able to function. Well our plan didnt work out because we werent fully working until the end of the day friday. Saturday morning we hit the ground running and were able to show that our catapult was more than capable.

Teams saw this, and even though we had a horrible rank, we were picked, and we made it to the semifinals.

There are hundreds of stories just like this one all over chiefdelphi and FIRST. For each time scouts miss a quality robot for elims, theres a 100 times they don't. Unfortunately everyone cannot be in the finals, you gotta sell yourself.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

I have to say I disagree on the alliance note as well. Our team had some not so perfect alliances at both NJ and Chesapeake regional, as far as going that we are the only robot on the field and so on. But our robot was picked to compete in elim matches in both places.

It really does boil down to scouting, I think 1418 did an amazing job of scouting and putting the alliance together at chesapeake and 694 did the same at NJ.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

When I saw this post, my assumption, having not been at the Chesapeake regional, was that there must have been poor scouting by the top-seeded teams and they ended up relying mostly upon standings rather than performance-based scouting of the individual teams. However, just to be sure about this, I looked at the Chesapeake regional results to see how that came about.

What I actually found is that there was actually quite a bit of selection of teams outside of the top 24. Actually, there were seven alliance picks from outside of the top 24 seeded teams -- indeed, there was only one alliance where all three teams were seeded in the top 24! It seems to me that there was quite a lot of picking outside of the top 24 teams! Seven teams within the top 24 were "passed over" in the alliance picking process. (Indeed, of the #17 to #24 seeds, the only team which was selected for the elimination rounds was the #21 seed, team 11.)

Having not been there, this outside examination makes it look like the alliance captains must have used scouting information to guide their choices, other than simply looking at the official standings. (See below.)

Actually, this looks like it may be what happened at Chesapeake, at least from the view of the "official rankings." The alliance which emerged as the champions was the #8 alliance, headed by the #10 seed (Team 1418), which selected the #21 seed (Team 11) and the #43 seed (Team 2016) to be their alliance partners. If you calculate the "seeding total" of their alliance, it was 10+21+43=74. This was the highest "seeding total" of any of the elimination-round alliances. Given the "official rankings" as the only information, one would think they would be the weakest alliance of all 8 alliances. Instead, they emerged as the winners! Clearly, they must have been doing some scouting to put together the champion alliance out of the teams that were passed over at least once by each of the other 7 alliance captains!

However, this analysis does confirm your point that the "official rankings" don't do a good job of identifying the best robots. However, it appears that the alliance captains didn't rely solely upon the "official rankings" to make their picks, but instead tried to find the good teams regardless of their "official rankings." Why your team wasn't picked, I don't know as I wasn't there, but it doesn't look like your being passed over was simply because you finished out of the top 24 teams.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

A few years back, our team was not selected for eliminations.
But, two teams who were not attending the regional were selected.
And one team who didn't even exist was selected.

Intelligent scouting is important. Please, for the sake of the other teams at your events, put a little effort in. If you happen to seed in the top 8, a good collection of scouting data will not only help you to win, but also let the best teams out there show their stuff. It doesn't have to be stats, but at least know the teams.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

I was surprised when watching the Midwest webcast that the #9 seed was never picked for an alliance. The team themselves were not surprised, though. They admitted that the #9 ranking was higher than they actually deserved. A great bit of GP shown by a rookie team.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

I agree, and this I think is a source of great divergence in philosophy among mentors and teams.

I've been on teams on both ends of the spectrum, and student-built robots are way more fun, and the students have pride and ownership.

Inspiration needs to come from this. Anything else is just a waste of potential. Student's don't learn anything from sending something out to get machined, and learn very little from watching a mentor do something.


On Scouting: I have my team's strategy team do what I did back in 2001: make an excel spreadsheet of all different teams and what they do, including observations. Does it tip? Does it have trouble picking up the ball? Is it slow? Can it hurdle well?

In the end the whole database has a concise matrix of fields on abilities and items of note, and the whole thing can be printed out, then shredded when the next version comes out.

2016 hasn't been in a situation to pick an alliance, but it's good practice, and we use the information in the qualifiers to see what we are up against and who we are working with so that we may adjust our strategy accordingly.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

On Student build vs Mentor build: I have been involved with both extremes, as well as the middle ground. In these cases, I have found that student built, mentor advised workes best. If both voices can be heard, and "hands on" type learners can learn, then it works out. However, this is not to say that the others cannot work. As a student, I found it boring to just sit there, and as a mentor, I found it distressing to have my opinion on matters I felt I knew a lot about thrown out the window. However, I am sure that other teams on both extremes have had better experiences.

On rankings: I feel that the twice the loser's score system helps encourage innovation. A brick on wheels will score very low here, since they keep the losing score so low. I agree that this system isn't perfect. However, it can be compensated for by good scouting. For example, at our bridge battle tournament this weekend, we seeded #2. We were picked by the #1 seed, who then told us that they had no idea who else they wanted. We had been watching every match, and had observed a rookie team, placed in the mid 30s out of 43 teams. They were there mostly through bad luck, but had a very effective robot. We advised the #1 seed to pick them, which they did, and they ended up playing a critical role on our alliance. Good scouting creates good alliances, as it brings out a robot's true performance, rather than wins, losses and ranking points.

There will always be an element of luck, even if we go back to 1v1v1, dependent directly on the other teams on the field.

Finally, when it comes down to it, rankings don't matter. At said vex tournament, we were eliminated narrowly in the semifinals, through a combination of mechanical problems and strong opponents. However, the day was still a great success, as our robot performed phenomenally, scoring 10-16 balls every match. The six days between our FRC regional and the vex tournament of hard work as a team to get our robot from nothing to that is what really counts in FIRST.

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This is very true. Also, if you get picked first round and your alliance partner does not have a clue on who to pick second, then your scouting data could come in mighty handy. This happen to us in 2003 and we were National Finalist. Besides, if you don't scout, how do you intend to beat your opponents? Luck can only go so far.

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So this is the second time today my computer has lost a long post just as I was about to post it... not too happy about that.

Like Eric H mentioned, I'm not even going to touch on the mentor-built robots thing. It's a pretty complicated discussion, and I think I have more insight into the other point anyway.

I don't have much of a problem with the ranking system, because it's not at all crucial to the FIRST experience. In the long run, you don't remember your ranking points, you remember the lessons and friendships from when you were on a robotics team in high school.

Furthermore, even at the competitions, most people don't weight ranking points that heavily. Experience and attitude are huge, as well as robot performance. Scouters should be (and mostly are) looking at the way robots interact with their partners, what they can do, and how well/fast they can do it. Ranking score isn't always an accurate reflection of this, but alliance partner selection often is. Alliance captains select teams which complement their abilities, not just teams who are ranked highly. I do have some stories to share from our team's history which follow this trend, if you're interested.

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First off on mentor built vs. student built bots, I am all for student built. As far as which way is more inspiring...who cares... this is a high school competition, and should be left to the students (if students want to be inspired by watching someone do work, then go somewhere else). Don't get me wrong, we need the mentors to lead us and help us out etc etc; without them the experience wouldn't be half of what it is. But when I look at some teams where the students don't even touch the bot, it's unfair to the students on that particular team, other teams that compete against them, and also teams where the students really do build a super robot and everyone just assumes that the mentors did it. Now people can just jump to the conclusion that every robot that is good is mentor built. All I'm saying is that I think the mentor built bots ruin the competition for everyone.

Next off is the ranking system. I think it's fine. Yes the qualification matches have luck of the draw involved, but if your not in the top eight, then you can be chosen by another team. This is why they don't just take the top 24 teams of the ranking sheets. If you really are underrated due to an unfortunate draw, then get your team name out there and hopefully someone will choose you.

Re: Soooo just some thoughts
 

If you look at the Dave Lavery lines pointed to earlier in this thread, you will see that this is exactly what FIRST isn't. Don't get me wrong, I still think that students should play a crucial role, but as Dave said "it isn't a high school science fair." FIRST is, first and foremost, about inspiring its students in science and technology. How individual teams do that is up to them. I, and most other people, have opinions on this, sometimes strong, but it is not, and never will, be written firmly down in the rules.