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Originally Posted by Tetraman
I'd argue that the point of qualifications is not to see who is best. Elimination matches are to see who is best. The point of qualification matches is to earn seeding points and be ranked based on your robot's and your ever changing alliance's results. Why are we punishing teams that can make it to a top 8 but are just inferior against the other robotics teams? You have every right to turn a team down - it's part of the competition and we saw it a lot this year as "lower" power teams are passed up because other alliance captians bet their skills can be utilized on their own with their own alliance rather than with them. Again, why punish teams that can make it to a top 8? Is it just because they aren't "good enough"?
And yes, you are very right that our team can make any and all tweaks we want to better our robot and ensure a higher competition robot - that doesn't mean the finished product will be that way, or that we would have the money and resources to pull it off, or time allowed by our school to use the shop facilities during the summer.
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I would argue that the entire competition (hence the name) is about winning. That begins with your first qualification match and hopefully ends in the finals. Because statistically 70% of #1 seeded alliances win their respective competitions everyone is trying to get there. This is where I lost you, I don’t really understand how eliminating noise in the qualification system is punishing anyone. If you could better articulate yourself on this point I would appreciate it.
I don’t really want to get into the already widely discussed topic of money and resources in this thread when it has been discussed so many times before. All it really comes down to is hard work. I’ll provide an example and leave it at that. In 2010, team 33 lost its primary sponsor in the Chrysler Foundation when they filed for bankruptcy. That summer our team contacted many companies providing letters, robot demonstrations, and presentations on how their money impacts our students. Everyone worked together, including the parents, to make sure that we would have the money to compete at the level we normally do. We acquired over 10 new sponsors which more than covered the absence of Chrysler. Any team is capable of doing that if they have the drive.
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Oh, and because the topic of conversation seems to have shifted towards triple balancing in qualifications. I have to say that I agree that it is not a good rule modification. While the rule does not greatly affect my team I know I would be upset if I built a long robot and this change was made. So while I understand if the rule stays, I hope that a solution can be agreed upon that does not so heavily disadvantage long robots.
Regards, Bryan