Early or Late Regional?

[Robert Cawthon]

If you can attend only one regional, would you prefer to attend a regional in the first week, an early regional not in the first week, or one late in the season? Or even the last week?

If you are running or volunteering for a regional, which do you prefer?

[Hallry]

Well, there are two different mindsets to those questions.

The good and bad to going to an early regional is that EVERYONE is new to the game. Teams are still trying out different strategies, and robots don't have any modifications based on prior competitions. Early regionals generally tend to have to have lower scores, since everyone is inexperienced (not taking into account some teams practicing beforehand on their own).

In a late regional, teams have learned from their previous successes and failures, and may have changed things due to those. A newcomer would most likely be lost among the sea of 'veteran' teams. And, for the teams who haven't yet competed in competitions, they have had a chance to watch webcasts of other events and plan strategies accordingly, and also decide upon possible modifications to their robot.

All considered, if I was attending a regional simply to win, I would probably attend an early, week 1 regional, since these are usually the easiest. Although I have never ran nor volunteered at a regional, I would probably sign up for a later regional in that case, since those are generally more exciting and fun =). Hope this helps!

[Taylor]

Another vote for Early, for exactly the reasons posted above.

[EricH]

Early, NOT week 1, if I had to choose. Reasons above, with one minor addition:

Week 1 is the de facto "X isn't tweaked right yet!" week for FRC. Tweaks are then implemented for Week 2. Now, this may change due to the longer time on game design... but there's always something.

Volunteering, I'd go later--there's more chance of teams knowing what's going on, which makes it easier on the inspectors and people of that nature.

[Chris is me]

Early, but be prepared at ship.

If you can't, then Late + Champs.

[brndn]

Personally, I'd prefer to attend a later regional, simply because there are always minor bugs and fixes (like the minibot towers) during the first week or so. It also gives you a chance to observe competitions from earlier weeks and create strategy, etc.

[JB987]

Week 3 and 6 works great if your team builds a practice bot Gives extra time for drivers to develop skills and iterative opportunities.

[BrendanB]

Week 1 or 2 based on only attending one event. Week one events are the best as everyone is on the same page. Granted there might be rules and strategies that will change or come into play, as long as you work hard to build a simple reliable robot and give yourself time to practice and tune, you can excel at your event. Additionally, if by some random chance you qualify for Championship, it gives you a long time to prepare.

Best of luck!

[Chris Hibner]

If you can only choose one regional, I would pick week 2. At that regional, the vast majority of the teams will be attending their first event so all of the robots will have issues to work through so you won't be at a disadvantage, and you can watch the week 1 webcasts and learn a lot about how to play the game. The good teams that scout week 1 can have a good advantage over the teams that don't spend the time learning how to play the game.

[Peyton Yeung]

I prefer early because by the time we compete at our "home" regional (Boilermaker) I'd like to be well practiced and experienced in the current years game play.

[Billfred]

On 2815, we like not-week-1. Palmetto has always been a Week 4-or-5 event, so we've picked our second events for before that. However, last year the positioning of Peachtree at Week 3 (with Palmetto at Week 4) made it so that we were one of the few teams that had played--most of the teams doing two events there chose Palmetto in Week 4 and North Carolina in Week 6 to avoid playing back-to-back. (Now the math changes a bit for 2012 with bag-and-tag. Peachtree and Palmetto are still back-to-back, but there's no obnoxious shipping charge--just the cost of being out of school/work two weeks in a row.)

TLDR: If you're only going to one event and are less concerned with performance, go for a later event--the game is usually better there. If you're only going to one event and you really want to do well*, look at the patterns and figure out how you can play with other people who haven't played.

*Generally, these are mutually exclusive; with few exceptions, everyone performs at a much higher level at their second event.

[Phyrxes]

We are also a supporter of the not week 1 idea. If only going to one regional we usually look for week 2 or 3.

[yarden.saa]

I would prefer late becasue the scoring will be higher and the game will be more exiting, but, the only regional we can attend is (Israel Regional) always in week 2-1/2 and this year in 1-1/2(Israel Regional is not in the weekend).
It is so early because the regional is depends on whether Maccabi Tel-Aviv(Basketball team) got to high leagues....

[IKE]

Another vote for Week 2. Some of the controls/games bugs worked out during week 1, but you will most likely be competing against other new teams.
Statistical analysis shows a big bump between 1st time playing and second time playing for most teams. A BIG BUMP. Usually on the order of 60% on average (this is based on tracking multi-event teams, and a lot of historical observations in Michigan where pretty much everybody plays twice). All it takes is 4 teams being at their second event to dramatically reduce the likelihood of you making it to the finals (if that is your goal).

If your goal is to have a smoothly run event, then pick a late one with a seasoned reputation of putting on a good event.

[PayneTrain]

Week 2/3 is a really nice sweet spot for one-competition teams. Week 1 events exist not because we always want them to happen, but because they have to. In the modern era of FRC, week one events (for me) have been thumbing around on Thursday waiting for the system to go online, a Friday of intermittent connections, and a real solid Saturday of play.

Week 1 benefits are the great competition, and the feeling of pioneering the game, seeing if you can twist the ideas the GDC had of the game into something cooler. That pioneering mantra comes with the perils of venturing into the great unknown... like communication failures and "missing rules" that will pop up in late competitions.