[EricH]

I'm going to give you a tip--NEVER bring up "mentor-built vs. student-built". Do a quick search on that, and you'll see why. The short of the matter is that not many care one way or the other, provided inspiration happens. You'll see the long when you do the search.

Now, on to the ranking system...
I might be willing to bet that some of the teams in the top 8 didn't have scouting crews. If they did, better robots might have been selected. Or, the better robots you saw might not have complemented the teams doing the picking. Both happen. It might also have to do with marketing, or lack thereof. (Note: I hope you aren't referring to your own team as one of the better robots unless you actually were.)

Your proposed solution would actually be more work for the scorers and lead to a decrease in teams working together. With limited scoring objects; all one team has to do is deny another the _______ and they get an increase in their ranking. But that isn't what FIRST is about, is it? Oh, and the every-man-for himself game format was already tried between 1992 and 1998. Seems that higher-seeded robots at the end of Friday kept getting defended. Collusions was suspected, but not proved. So it became required, and the alliance system was born.