[Siri]

Originally Posted by jon-s

FRC is a head to head competition not so much because it's for highschool, as that all the robots are in one large field (like most team oriented sports) and are thus able to interfere/aid one another. It would be drastically more difficult (many programmers already struggle with the current autonomous) if the whole FRC game was autonomous.

FLL can work easily as a (virtually) autonomous competition since the robots can only ever interact in one mission/task, which is either a race to activate/collect an object, or which will give both teams points. The robots are in otherwise entirely isolated fields.

Of course, yes. At the manifest level, (virtual) autonomous works because FLL robots compete individually, whereas FRC work many at once. But can't be the root cause--FIRST themselves decided those structures.

I suspect (with no evidence besides knowing elementary & high school students) that the main reason FIRST made the decision to have multiple FRC robots on one large field is because, well, high schoolers like head-to-head sports. (The direct competition adding qualities seen in most of their...competing...interests in a way most elementary schoolers are not yet as motivated towards.) And as we've agreed, programming at this level just doesn't work as well--for anyone, but certainly for high schoolers.

Originally Posted by Ekcrbe

Well, football does. It's on its own island in that respect, however.

Oh Ok. I thought it was like two. (The running thing and the kicking thing, yeah?) Maybe that sort of supports FIRST simplifying its rules for quasi-spectators. Lucky football doesn't have to rely on its own quasi-spectators like me!