[Racer26]

Originally Posted by alex334

Firstly, the ranking system. This year's seemed to particularly wonky.

I would actually suggest that its less wonky this year than several in recent memory.

Originally Posted by alex334

At a regional as large as NYC, eight matches per team simply don't cut it. How can a robot's abilities be assessed fairly in comparison with the rest when it mathematically does not have the chance to play with/against every other team. A lot of luck seemed to be involved.

Just how would you propose they do it differently? NYC was running on a 7 minute match turnaround. The field crew needs 5-6 minutes to reset the field for the next match, and if you get a 30 pt climber which needs a belay, the time is even longer. With 65 teams, there just isn't room for more matches.

Originally Posted by alex334

The large amount of penalties (I saw 120+ points scored on just penalties) also seemed to skew the rankings, especially when fouls were counted as goal/climb points. Let's face it, not everyone reads the rules.

I agree not everyone reads the rules nearly as well as they should, but all of the fouls were laid out in the manual, for everyone to see, and learn how to play by them. They SHOULD skew the rankings, not playing by the rules is tantamount to cheating.

Originally Posted by alex334

Why punish teams that do by dragging them down?

What? I don't understand. This isn't punishing teams that DO read the rules, its punishing the teams that choose to not abide by the rules.

Originally Posted by alex334

Why not find a better way to rank based on individual performance. I'm not arguing that great teams gravitate towards the top, but shouldn't the best team deserve first place, the second best second, and so on?

In an ideal world, yes, but with a limited amount of time to run the tournament, you have to make compromises. We obviously don't have time to play the game with every permutation of 6 teams at a regional. There are ~82.6 million ways to choose 6 teams for a match from 65.

Originally Posted by alex334

Which brings me to my final complaint. This exact bias in ruling occurred during the elimination matches of the NYC regional this year. (http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/29860861). Not only do I find this unfair, but it all of the refs seemed to disagree on what the large penalty was for. <snip>

Looking at the video: looks like a techfoul on 1635 for pinning to me. Or possibly climb interference on 375.

An iffy call maybe.

Originally Posted by alex334

I asked him to consider watching videos of previous matches in which I would gladly point out more extreme scenarios only a few matches prior which were not penalized.

Refs can't be expected to look at video every time someone feels slighted, see the "not enough time" argument I made above.

Originally Posted by alex334

He refused and told me to relax, because "it's just a game" and the refs are "just volunteers." Well, needless to say, the majority of us are just volunteers. I personally spent two weeks of my college vacation helping my team and countless hours on the bus to see the regional.

You should relax, and it is just a game.

That said, I agree with you that the mentors are volunteers too, and referees and other event staff should be expected to uphold the rules as written in a consistent manner. Anything less is unacceptable, and unprofessional in my mind.

Originally Posted by alex334

He told me that we still accomplished the mission of FIRST, since we learned a lot. He then walked away.

This is correct.

Originally Posted by alex334

I would like to see a lot more prizes celebrating engineering, programming, and business achievements. What do you guys think? Are we lacking in those?

There are several awards that exist for this purpose. See: Engineering Inspiration, Regional Chairman's, Engineering Excellence, Quality, Entrepreneurship, Rookie All-Star, Rookie Inspiration, Gracious Professionalism, Innovation in Control, Industrial Design, and Imagery. More awards would simply dilute the prestige that winning awards carries.