Ok, so YOU design the 2003 game...

[Andrew]

When designing next year's game, FIRST needs to decide two factors before proceeding.
1. How important is it that the over all winner be the best alliance?
2. Is being TV friendly essential?

If being TV friendly is important, you want a scoring system that accurately tallies points in real time. The audience should not be watching the match and simultaneously trying to count the score.

If you are going to have balls/frisbees/pucks placed/shot into goals, there needs to be no chance of "unscoring." You probably only want one ball (or a small number of balls) which can be scored repeatedly. Multipliers would be a "no-no."

If teams are going to compete in alliances (red and blue) and if the playing field is going to have preferences for red and blue scoring, then those areas of the field should be clearly marked with that color. The alliance station should be more clearly demarked than with the current flashing light. Perhaps the diamond plate can be painted red or blue.

You also want the best alliances possible in your elimination matches. The big TV payoff will come in the hard fought final matches

2. The current qualifying system does not create the best eight alliances. The random factor can bias a team's ranking by +- 10 positions (at least). Although, on average, the best teams float to the top, one unlucky pairing can keep a contender out of the elimination rounds.

I would recommend a three stage competition, instead of the current two stage competition.
1. Day one is qualifying (just like now). At the end of the day, the top 40 ranked teams can compete on day two. Lowest score is not dropped.

2. The top 40 teams continue to compete in randomly paired alliances through the morning of day two. You should be able to get three more matches per team in. The lowest score is dropped at this point. At the end of this phase of the competition, the top 24 teams are retained and go on to elimination matches.

3. Selection occurs as before, but from the top 24 teams.

Another, unrelated thought. It might be interesting to divide the teams at each competition into Red and Blue divisions. You get partnered within your division and play against the other division, exclusively. Perhaps, at Nationals, the divisions would partner within the division and oppose the other divisions (IE Curie versus Einstein, Archimedes, and Newton).

Andrew
Team 356