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At the Johnson&Johnson Midatlantic, BOTH alliances needed to swap robots in between rounds.
Also, AmyBeth330 is right. I was under the impression that the strongest alliance partners would square off in the frist round, and then come back for a "rematch" in the third. Not swapping robots in the finals is a silly thing to do, because the strongest combination will be pitted against the opposing alliance's weaker combo.
As for the rules, I think FIRST needs to screen their refs a bit more, i think having them take a quiz on the game, and having a network of rulings at different regionals would be a big steps to eliminating these problems.
As for the rules themselves, I think FIRST might have to "spell out" more of their rules. The Yahoo Group, although informative, often provided contradictory information, and MAJOR rule changes were made in the fourth week.
Think about it: they have 10 months to plan next years game, can't they have a bunch of engineer/lawyers sit around a table and nit-pick potential problems before they start?
I don't want to bash the FIRST people, but something really went wrong this year, from rule changes to referee calls, much more so than last year. Organization was a mess this year.
I hope this stuff gets fixed up for next year, or I think FIRST might start losing its veteran teams. How can a team play the game to their fullest extent when so much is dependant on rules and rulings that VARY from regional to regional?
(hope i didnt offend anyone)
--Ben Mitchell
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