Quote:
Originally Posted by Madison
In a district system where district Championship attendance is predicated upon points earned through competition, though, isn't it plausible that a team competing in week 1 and week 6 is at a disadvantage to a team competing in week 5 and week 6?
The total time spent on the robot may be the same, but the functional state of the robot may be quite different between the former and latter at their first event. In other words, while team A has 7 weeks before they have to compete for the first time, team B has 11 weeks. Our robot would certainly perform better after 11 weeks of work than it does after 7.
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No it's not a disadvantage, because everyone competiting in week 1 events have all had 7 weeks at that point. Everyone in the week 5 events have had 11 weeks, etc. In other words, your robot may have gotten better from week 1 to week 5, but so has everyone else's robot so the comptition around you is better. Once again, you're not competing against a set standard, you're competing against the other teams at that competition who have all had the same amount of time.
I'm actually going to advocate that the 6 week limit is a DISADVANTAGE to teams that compete late, especially in the district system.
Take team A who decides to attend events on weeks 4 and 6. With the current system, team A will have trouble going up against the 30+ teams at that event that have already competed in one event and have already had one event worth of refinement, practice, and fix-it windows. Team A is at a big disadvantage with the 6 week window. This is one of the reasons why we never schedule our first event after week 2.