[d.courtney]

Rack N' Roll is a very great concept, but thats all it is, there are too many quirks that weren't worked out, and many factors which killed this game. I have to say I very much was looking forward to this game when it was released, I expected many excellent scoring bots, after all the lessons we learned in '05 in what works and what doesn't. But when the game died for me was here on CD, when I saw 3 out of every 4 teams were a ramp bot, compromising scoring in order to be able to have teams climb up a 30 degree ramp, something even their robot couldn't do. So here is what I believe killed the game:

1. Lack of a central focus. Lets face it teams have tried everything this year, they make a robot with a ramp, and a scorer, thus equally compromising each other, then most of them don't have enough weight to make a 6 wheeled robot or track drive to drive up other ramps and can't compromise the lift they need in order to drive up one, so they settle to have a low clearance robot that others can drive on. With a vast majority of teams doing this, we end up with a lot of compromised robots. I respect the fact that some teams can do everything in the game and very well, but not every team can accomplish this, what we needed to do was K.I.S.S.

2. Not enough emphasis on autonomous. Ask anyone within FIRST and those with the most effective autonomous 9 times out of 10 have the most effective robot. With this year having little gain to have an effective autonomous, teams put it on the back burner worrying solely on mechanical, well a lesson we all need to take from, is that a well programmed average robot usually outperforms a poorly programmed engineered robot. Point is Autonomous not only scores you a few points, but teaches that programmer many things that they can bring back into their operator control, such as PID loops and sensors.

3. Spoilers mean almost nothing in the game. Chances are if you have to place a spoiler on a teams tube as to break up that row of 8 you don't have a good enough scorer to begin with as you should have stopped it by placing your own tube ages ago. Then if its evenly matched it makes more sense to double your points instead of play with the other teams tubes, something they are more liable to take note of and defend. Had FIRST instead said that a spoiler reverses the side said tube counted for, then it would have more uses in the game and we would see it played much more often.

4. The last thing that killed the game is the "random" schedules. This takes half of what FIRST is and throws it out the door, instead of having it so that no team is against any other team, playing with one match and playing against the next, we find many teams playing the same team time and time again. It also punishes the teams on the receiving end of a "stacked" side when they may have a very capable robot worthy of a top 8 placement. This is the only thing I feel FIRST can do for this game.