[shamuwong]

I can appreciate the whole 2^n scoring thing this year, it makes fast and efficient scoring extremely important, as well as effective defense to allow you to establish your rows.

I'm also happy with the rack and the movement required. This was the year for creative drive trains, as opposed to last year, where all you needed was a simple drivetrain with brute strength and a turret. Crab drive was a huge advantage for our team, along with other high scorers, such as Wildstang and Beatty. Not required, mind you, great scoring was achieved by other "conventional" drive robots, but it was definitely a great advantage for us, and many others, based on how many I saw this year.

However, the randomizing algorithm - There are a lot of strong teams out there with high numbers, and weak teams with low numbers. It's unfair to judge a team based on their number. At least in previous years, when we had less than favorable alliances, we had nothing to blame but luck. There are a lot of other things I could say about the so-called "randomizing", but they'd all be euphemisms for "utter crap". So I'll stop there.

Automode was also given too little value. So it's a ringer you can't spoil. There are plenty of others that you can that will do the job just as well. Plus, we have a rotating and translating light and rack, along with legs that swing wildly. Despite it's rather minute value to the game, its difficulty made ringers scored in auto very satisfying.

The kit of parts also proved to be another design challenge. Nothing like having to deal with sub-standard parts and unneccesarily large/heavy components to stimulate the engineering mind.

I hope FIRST develops more games where more complicated drivetrains are advantageous, in more ways than just ground clearance. Wildstang's 2004 robot comes to mind. I see them as being just as important as manipulators, if not more so.

All in all, a well-done game, except for the dodgy alliance algorithm.