Quote:
Originally Posted by Oblarg
However, a lot of posts here to the tune of "less-capable teams ought to just get out of the way" really irk me. FIRST is about inspiration. How "inspired" do you think members of those teams would feel reading some of the posts earlier in this thread? If you are on a successful team, then that is a great thing and you should take full advantage of it. But the program does not only exist to serve you and your interests. I find it extremely disheartening to see an attitude of dismissal (or even outright scorn) towards teams that arguably have the most to gain from FRC.
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I do not think anyone in this thread feels that teams building robots that can't score many points should stop participating in FRC. Instead, they feel that these teams should build the best robot they can with their skills at this point in time. Most of the time, this ideal robot is much more limited in scope than the robot these teams bring to the event.
You can always point back to Karthik's "it is better to be a 10 at one thing than a 5 at two things." There are absolutely teams in FRC with very little build space, very few tools, and very little knowledge of how FRC works. For those teams, the best thing for the team is to build a solid kitbot with maybe a very simple manipulator, teach everyone on your team that basic level of skill, and drive the snot out of it. Then they can come back the following year and build upon those skills to do something better.
1778 has mostly rookie members. This week we were teaching kids the difference between a regular wrench and an allen key, and I think that's awesome. We aren't shooting. We're gonna be great at picking up off the floor and passing, and maybe catch if we have time left over. Would it be cool to have a whiz-bang shooter? Of course. Could we build a shooter? Sure. But we'd much rather be a 10 at one thing than a 5 at two things. It is much more important to us that we train the kids so next year so our team can be prepared to build an even better robot while we mentors have even more opportunities to sit around and drink coffee. We also recognize the importance of driver practice.
FRC for a four year student is a marathon disguises as four sprints. I'd much rather win the marathon than a sprint.