Quote:
Originally posted by Francis-134
Some of these ideas sound like Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection. All these teams fighting for the same amount of resources, some live and some don't! 
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That is pretty much how it works though if you think about it. As for the OCCRA comment someone else made, I agree with what you're saying. I know of some other leagues that have spawned off as well. One program called "BEST" is a program made by people who used to be in FIRST but wanted to make a cheaper competition. The game is ONLY $500 for your kit and you pay a really low competition entry fee. The robots aren't nearly as big, but they still become complex, and I kind of like that they limit teams to just the kit they send you, so that all teams have to be creative since they all work with the same things, then after the year, you send the kits back and disassemble the bot and get your $500 kit fee back. I kind of like this idea because, to be honest, you can't really use your past years robots very much except for the actual game, maybe as a prototype for the next years, but after the game year, it pretty much becomes useless and can't be used generically. I think new leagues will continue spawn like this, and what I like is that you COULD join multiple leagues. Next year we will of course be in FIRST, but a teacher and myself are going to probably try to start a BEST program as well, for other students interested but can't devote as much time into a program like FIRST. Other more popular programs such as Battlebots IQ seem to show a good learning experience as well. I think that with time an equilibrium will be found, and all of these leagues can connect together and sort of function as one, yet work independently depending on what particular schools/areas can afford or want to build, creating more diversity and the programs are fit more to the individual needs of a group of people.