In response to the FIRST forums

[Madison]

Originally posted by Kevin A
M - as Doug said, you would still have 2 players out there, so you wouldn't necessarily loose.

Well, that's all well and good. . .except that winning or losing isn't what I was talking about. I don't care about winning or losing, honestly.

What I do care more about is giving these teams every opportunity to put on the best show for themselves that they possibly can. That means, partly, giving them to opportunity to field a fully functional, reliable robot for each of their matches.

Of course, time constraints during the competition require that, sometimes, this doesn't happen. Increasing the field throughput by adding teams to each round is great for larger events because it adds more opportunity for teams to show their stuff, while still providing each team with downtime that is commensurate with other teams at other events.

If it went to 4 vs. 4, for example, teams would compete twice as much per event, but have half the time to repair their robot. See the tradeoff? Now, at larger events, half the normal repair time might be commensurate with what teams at smaller events normally see. However, teams at smaller events would have almost no time to make important repairs. While 3 vs. 3 wouldn't have the same effect, it'd still be pronounced.

Ask teams like 365 if they want the time they have to fix their robots cut in half.