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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
part of the idea of a handicap system is that you are playing against yourself, your teams past performance, just as much as you are playing against other teams.
If veteran team has done very well in the past, and they dont do even better this year, then they are sitting on their lauraels. Thats not what engineering is about.
If a team trys to design a robot that does everything, and they dont have the experience and resources to pull it off, then they have made a bad engineering decision.
Science and engineering - thats what we need to keep the focus on. If Im working alone as an engineer, and I decide Im going to put Microsoft out of business by writing a better operating system, then I have set my sites on an unreachable goal. No matter how good of an engineer I am I will never be able to take down Microsoft by myself.
But I might design a simpler product, or take on a smaller project, and create something that is pure genius in design and execution. Who would you give an engineering award to? A company that turns out a so-so operating system year after year
or an individual who creates something that is perfect in its function and form and design for its intended purpose?
I know we already have engineering design awards, and quality awards, but with some type of team handicap system we could open up the competition itself and make the contest more level for all the teams.
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I don't beleive there is a FIRST team that doesn't already strive to get better and better each year though. Sometimes you don't accomplish that, and that's part of life. It's quite hard to follow up a Regional win with a Division win, and a Division win with a Championship win, etc. That's why you see so few teams do it, which is why the few that can are so special. The fact is, you HAVE to be better to stay at the same level of success in FIRST without a system to force it. Because FIRST is growing, in order to win the same awards and get the same ranking etc, you have to beat more teams, which means being even better. A system like this isn't "leveling the playing field", it's rigging it against the historically successful teams.
I don't particularly think that the current system is broken. If I was going to change it, the only thing I'd do is add some more tie-breakers (I never like "coin flip" scenarios, as are always used as the eventual tie-breakers in every major sport and FIRST). Maybe Head-to-head record, or average points scored as additional tie-breakers after RP and Max Score. Although, I don't beleive that anyone has ever been tied after Max Score anyway...