Well, a thought crossed my mind, that if you want to help another team, there are other ways to do so than trading points. You could teach them a new machining technique, or send one of your programmers to them to teach them how to run autonomous mode. It's like the old saying "If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime." If you give a team points, they may go to nationals, but have little or no overall improvement in their robot the following year. But, if that team has an excess of points, it means they must be doing
something right. So, if they sent a few team members over to teach the team a few tricks, then that team may see a drastic improvment, and make it to nationals the next year, and continue improving with the knowledge gained. I think that most teams would be more gratefull for this type of assitance than points that get them to nationals for a year.
In response to a previous poster, you should not feel "shafted" because an odd numbered team got to go to nationals, even though they built their robot in the first regional. You will have the same oppurtunity next year. They may have picked that option as an engineering challenge for that year, or they may have been forced into that situation due to a lack of workspace, etc. Perhaps going to nationals will give them a chance to recieve help that they couldn't obtain at the regionals.
I know that makes a strong case for everyone going to nationals every year, but that is simply not possible. We would literally take over the town!
If you look at the current system another way... almost everybody is in high school for 4 years. That means, if they are on the team all 4 years, that they will go to nationals twice (assuming they win no awards, etc). That seems "fair" to me, but as was said above, there is no right answer, no definition of fair that everyone agrees on, and no way that we can achieve a perfect "fairness." When we reach the "real world" of engineering and technology, it is no longer the expierence that is important, it is the creation of a successful product. There are no prizes for second best in the real world, unfortunately. I think if we expierence just a little of that before we are sent out to design the next generation of cars, planes, spaceships, segways, etc. it will make us better engineers as a whole. Of course, this is just my belief, and there is nothing to say I am right. You can agree, and that's fine. You can disagree with me, and I'm fine with that as well, and would love to hear your point of view as well!