[Cody Carey]

I don't like it very much...

At Pittsburgh, we ended up with a rookie team as first seed... They were an awesome team, and a VERY awesome alliance captain and we couldn't have asked for more. That being said... The were a drivable base that hadn't run in some of their matches. They were undefeated in qualifying.

When you get this happening, the First alliance is automatically handicapped against. The first seed rookie chooses whatever bot is in their best interest for the first alliance selection (at Pittsburgh, that team was us), but when you get around to choosing again, quite a few of the top scoring or ramp bots are gone. This left us with two exceptional defense bots and one exceptional hybrid. This is different than having a team earn their way up by being an exceptional scorer.

Any rookie team (no matter how AWESOME they are) that doesn't earn their way to the very top of the regional is not being given a gift. They are being handicapped against. This leaves the first alliance in a very tight predicament when the other alliances have two or three scorers each, and they have one.

I am not complaining, And I couldn't have asked for the Pittsburgh regional to go any better for us than it did, I am just relaying an unfortunate situation that happened to a rookie that got stuck in the new algorithms.


In my opinion, FIRST should not give precedence to rookie teams. It shouldn't be about team number, it should be about the ability of the robot.