[FRC Blog] FIRST Robotics Competition Registration Update

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by dodar

Sure, but I think it would still have to be geographically near. Like if 179 would rather have Orlando over South Florida; but not 179 would rather have Peachtree over South Florida.(RIP Peachtree Regional)

You mean like 233 did in 2015

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

I think the intent is that teams that choose the event that is geographically closest to them have a preference or advantage over teams that decide they want to travel. After all, should a team from California that lives 5 minutes from an event not get into that event because a team from Florida wants to visit the west coast? Providing a benefit to those teams that choose the closest event to themselves helps to keep costs down across FIRST, especially when you consider that there are team's all over that don't have the funding to pay for buses and hotels.

There is more to it then just being geographically close, for example Florida has two regionals this year Week 1 and Week 2, unfortunately as of this moment we may not be able to attend either due to scheduling conflicts with our school(s), so creating a home event system would mean we would either
A) Be forced to sign up for an event and have no students at it till midday Friday
or
B) Have to hope that in a weighted lottery system we get lucky.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

There is more to it then just being geographically close, for example Florida has two regionals this year Week 1 and Week 2, unfortunately as of this moment we may not be able to attend either due to scheduling conflicts with our school(s), so creating a home event system would mean we would either
A) Be forced to sign up for an event and have no students at it till midday Friday
or
B) Have to hope that in a weighted lottery system we get lucky.

In such a system, I would hope you would be able to chose a "replacement" regional for your first choice before anyone else gets to choose a second regional. I would hope that leaves enough room open for teams in such a situation to pick a different regional. It may not be the second or third closest regional, though, depending on team density in your area.

Even with these issues, I still think a system that focuses on minimizing travel for all teams would come up with the "least objectionable" first event picks overall, allowing those with issues to then address them within the remaining capacity.

[DonRotolo]

Just like now, I would not be surprised if several slots from each event were 'held back' to handle unexpected or unfair situations, where the event organizers then can manually rectify things.

FIRST Choice uses a system that might be scalable to registration.

No matter what, the answer isn't simple. If WE can't come up with a fair system, nobody can. There will be randomness....