[Joe G.]

Not so much bad, as could be a lot better. Just dosen't feel unique enough. The racks make the acquisition of the puck shape kind of a non-challenge, as a bin approach is as easy or easier than individual object manipulation. As I said in the other thread, the "capture and trap all of your opponent's gamepieces" strategy seems a bit too easy compared to scoring. I'm not a big fan of one central scoring structure, as it allows one robot to effectively defend the whole thing.

The endgame, however, is very unique, although possibly a bit damaging to the robots, if they fall. Longer autonomous is always nice to see, although I'm not sure that 30 seconds is completly necissary for the tasks avalible autonomously. I think that there may be problems determining if autonomous gamepieces are scored at the end of the match.

FIRST still hasn't shown me a clear-cut reason for ditching VEX. We will be playing Elevation this year, mostly due to cost issues. We just don't have the resources to "creativly use our lexan and aluminum" by any standard, or pay for all the inflated costs of the Tetrix set compared to VEX. And, although I'm sure more advanced parts are on the drawing board, VEX simply allows us to do more than Tetrix, as of now.

I hope FIRST made the right decision here...