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Originally Posted by hpycmpr
There are some inherent difficulties for rookie teams. they spend more time doing things that other teams can do quickly. An easy way to assist young teams would be to allow more time.
If a team has been in existence for 1-2 years then their ship date would be 8 weeks after kickoff. For teams 3-4 years ship date would be 7 weeks after kickoff. All other teams ship 6 weeks after kickoff.
It just allows more time for inexperienced teams to get their act together.
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With a bit steeper gradient (first year: 8 weeks, 2nd year: 7 weeks, 3rd+ years: 6 weeks), this is the best idea I've heard in the thread so far. It is concise, it is definite, it is
enforceable, and it gives help in an area that rookie teams probably struggle the most with: time. I don't think you'd get too many people whining about "that rookie team dominating because they got all the extra build time", because everyone would know that next year that team will have less time. Further, it isn't easy to manipulate this system. With cash or mentor divisions, you might have teams under-reporting cash spent or mentors used just so they get into a less competitive division. On the other hand, it is impossible for a team to claim they've only been competing for one year so that they get more time.
It's so easy to waste time on a rookie team just trying to figure stuff out. If you've got a first-year programmer with no instructions other than the internet, it isn't unusual to waste an entire night doing something that would take a 2nd or 3rd year programmer 5 minutes to do.
Many other ideas that have been proposed (divisions by cash, divisions by student/mentor makeup) are very difficult to draw lines with. If a team spends $1999, are they definetely worth helping out more than a team that spent $2001? Since help is likely to come in chunks and not in a smooth spectrum, it is difficult to make up brackets to divide teams with. Cash spent and # of mentors are things that require hairy definitions and gray areas. If a school buys $100K of machine shop equipment and uses it to shape $500 worth of steel into a robot, how much money was spent? If a recent graduate of a school shows up and helps out, are they a mentor, or still a student? To the team it would appear that they are just a student.