3 Teams Per Side Too Many?

[Jim Meyer]

Originally Posted by petek

I think this question might be rephrased to "which is more important: striving toward field dominating performance, or gracious professionalism?"

I don't think that gradious professionalism and "dominating performance" are at odds with each other in FIRST. If we want FIRST robotics to be more of a sport than a science fair I think competition is a key element. If FIRST wants to gain mainstream appleal good robots should seed at the top. Poor ones should be at the bottom.

Like Dr. Joe mentioned, the randomness isn't any worse than previous years if the numper of matches played goes up appropriately. I think this was the problem at Nationals. Didn't we play 8 matches last year? I was expecting 10 or more this year.

I think this year was better than last on a whole. The Regionals did play more matches to help with the randomness issues. I loved the fact that all the robots played all the time in the finals. It worked well with this year's game but could be pure chaos with a different type of game. I might be a little biased though.

[Amanda N.]

I agree with what a lot of people have been saying in here so far.. I definitely was glad to have more matches (my team usually only gets to go to one competition, so it's nice to have as many matches as possible there). I think the games are more interesting/exciting (but harder to keep track of) with 6 robotics out there. It's nice to get to work with more teams, too.

I think it would be wierd to go back to 2 vs 2 next year.. I got used to having 2 other teams in the driver station, and maybe this is just me, but I think it would seem more simple/small/boring (well, a robotics comp. could never be boring.. I just can't think of the right word for what I'm trying to say right now though) with just 2 teams per alliance again.