Alright, I know alot of people are going to extremely dislike me for this, but I have a few suggestions.
I agree with Mr. Lavery that FIRST should have more improvising. When Mr. Lavery came by our robot at VCU, he enjoyed seeing our robot made of shelving, lamps, plastic bins, bungee chords, a lawn mower wheel, and a bicycle. First should encourage more scrounging, improvising, and dumpster-diving. (We found a large sheet of steel in a dumpster behind a Wal-Mart once
) I hope there can be more of that in the future.
There should be an optional autonomous mode, in addition to the regular autonomous mode. Teams that opt for the XAuto, will have their points doubled, or added onto, depending on the type of game. All teams will have to comply with some form of ID system, so all robots can know who's where. There should also be some form of Rookie/2nd-Year team points for completing, or almost completing, the XAuto. Autonomous programing is tough. Believe me, I know.
FLL has been tougher than FRC for me. You can't custom-fit a LEGO. Everything is autonomous. It's smaller scale. you have to work with a less-powerful programming system, and fit everything into 5 slots. And that doesn't even include the presentation, which is harder to work on than the Chairman's Award, at least now that it's been restricted to paper. FLL is much less strict then FRC regarding the build time, which is not as good as you might think! I almost wish I could be on a FLL team this year.
I would also like to see something with water. I saw that somebody mentioned ice, and that's also unique, but I think water would present an ultimate challenge! (I'm serious here.)
Thank you for taking the time to finish reading my post! If you have any comments or flames, you can just PM me.