Assuming a 3 vs 3

[Corey Balint]

If it is indeed 3 vs 3, it will make scouting much more important. Normally during competitions the 2nd pick(assuming that a 4th team will not be selected) of alliances normally goes overlooked and is not held accountable for much that goes on, many times they are just cast off to the side and only used once during each round. The pick might also be used to help out a team you are friends with because they havent had a good weekend. Many times, teams dont know who to pick in the 2nd round because some scouts dont look beyond the top bots and ignore the eventual teams that become role players.
With a 3 vs 3, the 2nd pick becomes much more important and will make scouting much more important and an absolute necessity.

With a 4 vs 0, the game will become much more boring and contain very little scouting/strategizing, well much less then a 3 vs 3.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Corey Balint

With a 4 vs 0, the game will become much more boring and contain very little scouting/strategizing, well much less then a 3 vs 3.

I agree. 2001 was not a very good year for spectators. And the competitors basically knew who was going to win as soon as the elimination round schedules were announced, barring any disastrous setbacks.

I can't see FIRST returning to 4v0 or any combination of 3 alliances or 3 single teams. 1 and 2 will always gang up on 3 and that's not what FIRST is trying to promote.

On the matter of space on the field for 6 robots, our current field is large enough. Assuming there's nothing like ball drops or ball corralls in the way in the alliance stations, you could fit 3 teams side by side. Now if there's any kind of center structure like last year, 6 teams starts to sound like an awful lot.

As I think Bill Gold pointed out in another thread, it would take relatively little work on FIRST's part to keep the same rectangular field, but extend the player stations to make the field wider.

3v3 would add a whole new element to the game and make us have to think even harder, as well as cooperate better, which is a main goal of FIRST, so I wouldnt be at all surprised to see this in the game come 5 days from now.

[663.keith]

I doubt that there will be 3v3 teams just because it would be way too much to handle.

*Building more durable robots sounds good, but is pretty difficult to attain, most teams don't purposefully build less sturdy robots because they think that they will have time to fix the robots. I can't imagine seeing the final matches, there would be so much time between them if one robot weren't allowed to sit out during a match.

*queuing six robots at a time would be a nightmare! the flow of 8 robots on and off the field is confusing enough, think of 12 robots. It would take forever to set up, and tear down the field

overall I think that some sort of 3v3 would be fun to participate in, but seems like just too much of a hassle to work