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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
The purpose of a handicap/rating system isnt to makes everyones final scores all come out exactly even
the purpose would be to take a step towards leveling the playing field.
On average rookie teams do not field very competitive robots. If a rookie team does expectionally well, they deserve to win.
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And a veteran with an even better robot doesn't?
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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
If a team won a regional last year, we expect them to do even better this year, and be a championship contender.
If you put a shooter on your robot, and you do a poor job on the design, so it cannot score many points, then you will be one of the poorly designed robots in the shooter class, and your score will reflect that.
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But what about a team like 56 in 2006? They had a well above average shooter, but they decided to play as a "hybrid" and both shoot and dump. What "category" would they fall under? Or a team like 522 who had an excellent shooter, but played even better defense and ended up playing primarily defense? Because defense typically only requires a strong drivetrain, moderately sized frame, and a robust robot, it is often very easy to combine with any design, which creates problems with your system.
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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
Having a handicap system will allow HS-only teams with little funding and no mentors to focus on a simple defensive robot, and at least have some chance of making it to the finals.
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1139 made it to Einstein, that was the first award they ever won. 1731 made one of the best rookie bots ever in a barn. The playing field is plenty level. Many of the most creative and dangerous bots come out of these lower budget teams.
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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
Look at it this way: you are seated in the top 8, and you need to pick two robots. You want one shooter and one defensive bot. With the handicap system you have more incentive to pick a good purely defensive bot, than to pick a team that tried to do everything and does nothing well, just to play defense. You would have more incentive to pick a rookie team, if that means your alliance has a better handicap rating.
Leveled playing field.
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Or pick a robot that doesn't even move to get a ton of extra points....