Quote:
Originally Posted by Karthik
This year alone there have been five separate issues that have driven a large amount of people crazy. (Banebot kit transmissions, pre-season design restrictions, shipping of batteries, horrible match scheduling, machines in the pit. Not to mention the Hatch fiasco of the past two years.) If changes aren't made, the lifeblood of this program is going to slowly disappear.
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I have carefully read through all these posts and have come to the realization that these problems we are mentioning (not only this newest issue), are not hurting the veteran teams nearly as much as the rookie teams. Last weekend I heard Dean give a lengthy speech about his plan for the growth of FIRST. He proclaimed that within a decade we have grown to just over 1000 teams, and within the next decade we must grow to over 10,000 teams.
If FIRST wants 9,000 new teams (and to not loose any teams we have), they first need to figure out how to properly supply the teams they have. I will not rant on the banebots issue more than I have, but there are other issues which have affected all teams (but more so rookie teams). Such as shipping of batteries, here in Canada there is no supplier of the specific batteries we are required to use, FP motors there is 0 stock left and no FIRST supplier to purchase from, and banebots running out of supplies their gearbox's. If FIRST wants to see this growth they are going to need to do a lot of work on their infrastructure, which is having difficulties supporting 1300 teams at this point.
FIRST needs to start listening to the teams, we work hard to try and support rookie teams, these type of rules just limit how we can help teams and are not beneficial to the community. If FIRST wants to see this type of growth they need to start listening to the great community we have here.