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Originally posted by M. Krass
Obviously, there are more people participating now than ever before and so there are more voices crying about even the most inconsequential of topics. Also, I'd not be surprised to learn that as FIRST continues to grow and veteran teams vanish from the landscape, the median level of experience across all FIRST teams is decreasing. As a result, we're likely to continue seeing machines that are designed by teams with less practical experience in the FIRST arena.
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Interesting point on the older teams vanishing from the landscape. While I'm on a veteran team now, the older engineers aren't doing the program anymore, but the younger engineers now are FIRST alumni from 5-6 years ago. On this years machine a large portion of the design and integration was handled by FIRST alumni, who were on our team back when they were in High school. I myself was on this team(177) as a high schooler(96-99) and am back when i started working for the parent company again, and there are at least 3 others as well in the same situation.
To get somewhere and make a point, I'm curious how many of the FIRST 'experience' is actually now coming from people who are alumni of the student portion. So as some of the older teams vanish, the actual students come back as mentors with all the experience they had for the rookie teams, giving stronger rookie teams. Just a thought from what I see on our team.
As to rough play we definitely planned on this being a vicious game and built towards it accordingly making sure we had a solid frame that wouldn't bend/break easily which was a mistake made once wayyy back. The thing is though making a rugged frame requires a lot of initial thought as to where to put the wheels, the mounts, material, how too keep the weight in the right positions and we had to re-do parts 3-4 times in some places in order to get it right when we noticed a problem. It definitely paid off but this is a rough game, but that might be what makes it exciting as people off the street, while not understanding all the rules, can always appreciate the game from heavy hits to balls flying all over when a robot is hit while shooting.