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Originally Posted by Cory
Eliminate half the practice rounds on Thursday at the Championship Event.
All teams have competed in at least one, with a decent percentage in two regionals. Everyone should be able to pass inspection by the end of lunch. There would probably be more of a sense of urgency to get inspected if you knew you had less time to do so as well, speeding up the process.
After lunch, start the qualification rounds. Run then from 1 PM to 7 PM and close the pits at 8 PM. All teams should be able to get at least 2-3 more qualification rounds, which would be huge, considering you're only getting 7 right now. It would give teams more value out of their $5,000 and make the event more competitive overall.
This is the only solution I can see that gives teams more matches, without requiring more fields, more days added to the event, or FIRST needing to find more volunteers to staff the event. It would require that the referees and scorekeepers all work an extra day, but they're all at the event on Thursday already. They'd just be forced to complete their training earlier in the day, and they wouldn't be able to do two jobs at the event (ie: referee and inspect).
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I love this idea. Do you really need to practice after 1-2 regionals?
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Originally Posted by Tetraman
but considering the joke pulled on us with the changing lights from Aim High Nationals, some out of the hat unknown addition can be added for the finals at nationals.
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Actually, if you look at it, the light shield actually showed you the orientation of the game field. Red Green Blue, With the alliances at the ends and the green (autonomous goal) in the middle of the field. That could be nothing more than sheer coincidence as well though.
I do like the idea of having backup robots in the finals, like IRI this past year, but it would be harder to accomplish at events like Midwest where there only 30-some teams that compete. In response to only doing it for larger regionals, I think however its done, it should be the same for every regional.
I did like the robot classes this year, I felt it made for some more interesting designs. Maybe that could be elaborated on more next year.
As far as the finals go, I think Serpentine order is the way to go (1-8, 8-1). The only alternatives I can think of would be the old straight shoot (1-8, 1-8). If we did alliances of 4, whether that be 4v4 or 3v3 with backups, the order should be done (1-8, 8-1, 1-8). Cmon... everyone loves upsets.