[FRC4ME]

Whoa guys; before proposing so many rule changes, think about the original intentions of those rules:

Removing trailers of no-shows would create GP nightmares. What if all three robots on an alliance do not show up? Now the other alliance has no way of scoring. What if a team is barely able to move, and their alliance partners try to convince that they'd be better off leaving their robot (the one they spent six weeks building) off the field. What if an alliance's scoring and defense strategy would work better with two robots/two trailers instead of three of each? Is a team allowed to voluntarily stay off the field even though their robot is working fine, because they know the opposing alliance's strategy requires three targets? It just wouldn't work.

G14 adds a great strategy element provided the real-time scoring is accurate. The entire rule is based on the accuracy of real-time scoring. If accurate real-time scoring cannot be done, the rule should go away; otherwise, it can stay.

The Serpentine draft makes elimination matches much more balanced and fun, not only for players but also for spectators. While the current system of 6-8 qualifying matches generally does a good job of selecting the top eight teams, where a team ends up within the top eight is mostly a matter of luck, and using 1-8 1-8 draft order would reward the top half too much for something dependent on a random match generator. Remember that opponent's score is generally what ranks the top eight; the teams have no control over the quality of their randomly-selected opponents.

The goal in autonomous this year is not to score, but to get away from the PS directly behind you. Disallowing HP scoring during autonomous would defeat the entire purpose of the mode this year; most teams would simply do nothing. Adding a bonus for autonomous scoring would divert attention from the main goal of autonomous this year, which is the move out of the way. Rather than reward players for doing something in autonomous, the GDC decided to punish players for not doing something in autonomus; that appears to have worked quite well, as a do-nothing autonomous was virtually unseen this year.

As for the camera, teams who figured out how to use it had plenty of opportunities to use that knowledge in teleop mode, where a good camera tracking system could improve scoring accuracy considerably. Autonomous incentives were not necessary this year to encourage teams to use the camera.

Think about the rules before you change them; many of them have very deep. complicated reasons that may not be immediately obvious.