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Re: Defense-A Fancy Word For Poor Ability
Posted by Patrick Dingle at 04/27/2001 9:49 PM EST
College Student on team #639, Red B^2, from Ithaca High School and Cornell University.
In Reply to: Defense-A Fancy Word For Poor Ability
Posted by Bill Beatty on 04/27/2001 12:42 AM EST:
As I read your post, I cannot believe you are talking about the same competition that I was involved with this year. Although I have only been involved 3 years, I think the competitions were by far the most boring and unexciting of the three. More importlantly, I saw an incredible amount of disinterest amoung high school students which was not indicitive of the type of enthusiasm I have witnessed the past two years. I even saw a team that had to rotate their scouts during nationals because they could not stand watching match after match. From the viewpoint of a spectator, the strategy is the same every match -- there is no significant variety in matches -- and more often than not this strategy ends up in disaster. There weren't that many people watching the finals this year... Why? Because the results are easily predictable. Everyone knew team 71 would win likely with a score of 710.
With all respect, you have a great team and robot this year, but surely your opinion is biased since you won the competition and never really had to look at the competition from a spectator's point of view.
Then there's the fact that when you are one robot out of four on the playing field, you're ability to decide your own destiny is cut in half from that of the previous two years.... But that's another point, and it's already been talked about over and over.
Patrick
: Sorry Kyle, I can't agree even a little bit with your push to return to wheel to wheel competition. In the six years of our involvement in FIRST, this competition was, by far, the most exciting, electrifying of them all at the three events we were in. There were more folks watching and cheering at the final matches then there have been for a number of years. I can't imagine a design engineer or design team that can create a high capability, high scoring robot would ever want a slug of a do nothing robot to block, pound, or in any way restrict it's ability to perform. Could it be, that in actuality, the folks who are pushing for head to head and defensive competition are really fearful of putting their design and construction ability on the line? Maybe the ones that are saying they want competition really do not want to try and compete. Interesting.......
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