FIRST Choice is Profoundly Flawed

[2544HCRC]

I want to go on the record as voicing my disappointment with FIRST Choice. I was on soon after it opened and everything we could use was gone. We were looking at Talons, a CRIO, and sensors. By the time I was able to get on (within hours) everything was gone. Nothing else was really worth the shipping to us. This is the second year that I have left ALL of the FIRST Choice points intact. I am thinking that more teams need to just leave the points instead of ordering useless stuff to burn up the points. I think if FRC sees many teams leaving all 100 points it might trigger some discussion that the system isn't working for quite a few teams.

My thought is that there should be a first round where teams get 1 or 2 of things that would be reasonably expected to be needed by all teams. After that initial round teams could have a free for all over what is left.

I agree that there were many items in the kit that were not needed. However, the pendulum seems to be swung the other way. The kit of parts was pretty bare this year. I realize that we are collectively renting many large spaces in urban areas for regionals but the cost is getting a bit much for what you get. Especially knowing that the same $5k would support almost 7 lego teams or several FTC teams. Yes I am aware that the cost has not gone up in many years. Add on to that the several thousand you know you are going to need because the kit is so lean. My understanding was that the KoP was supposed to provide a team a reasonably competitive robot. I was beaten up on this very forum for suggesting otherwise and regaled with stories of teams winning regionals on nothing more than the KoP and a good hammer. I don't think you could put a robot on the field this year out of the kit. In our case, as a team that is now in our 5th season, we needed to replace the camera (ours quite working), the classmate is about worthless, and we are on the old CRio that could use replacing. A well thought out and better FIRST Choice would go a long way toward solving some of the problems. If nothing else, maybe an auction of some type for the FIRST Choice major parts?