[FTC]: 2009-2010 FTC World Championship - What do you think?

[Abra Cadabra IV]

So now that there's been enough time for the dust to settle, what did you think about this year's FTC World Championship?

Personally, I thought this year's competition was awesome. I quite liked the addition of the Tetrix booth to the pits this year (and would like to thank them for replacing the gamepad we fried during our first match!) I was also blown away by many of the robots that showed up this year, as usual - some of the machines that came were nothing short of astounding.

On behalf of Team 25, I'd like to congratulate the winning alliance of 2868, 2843, and 3864, as well as all other award winners and everyone who attended in general. You all rock!

[Chris is me]

The event seemed like the first FTC national competition without major, event-ruining field issues plaguing it for teams. I guess that's a plus, only took like 4 years to get that one right

The main complaints I had with FTC this year were based on the Kit of Parts, mainly. Does anyone really think Tetrix parts right now are better than Vex? With FVC, you had a wide variety of parts to adapt and use to build awesome competition robots, but now you see teams having to extensively use messes of zip ties to get stuff done. In FVC all you ever needed was a file and hacksaw and you could basically make any robot you want, but with FTC you basically have to do some polycarbonate machining, again due to the crappy kit of parts, that costs hundreds more...

But if you want something positive, the addition of roller chain and omni wheels made robots a lot more interesting and technically able this year. Much needed additions. The fixed field issues, while a year too late, are nice. The game this year was very interesting and well designed!

[Andrew Schuetze]

I don't want to get into the Vex vs Tetrix debate that still persists for some. Doesn't the opening up of the allowable list of materials allow for more creativity by teams? As an event organizer for the Alamo FTC Championship, I don't get to see many of the robots as I am busy with all the tasks at hand, but I saw some interesting designs that no kit of part could help create as they were custom parts. This tends to put FTC as more of a hybrid between FLL and FRC as FLL is 100% Lego parts and FRC is 80% custom parts beyond the KOP chassis.

[JohnFogarty]

I don't want to get into a KOP arguemant either but yeah, FVC has more parts that would have made this year easier but again I do like the FTC stuff better. and zipties.....CAN DO ANYTHING!!

And Congrats to team 25 for winning Inspire..i sorta knew Franklin had it on that one. great job!! It was a tough last match for us, we didnt think we were going to do as well as we did.

anyways we're excited to part of the World Champion Alliance ...Aiken finally did something right. anyways with our rookie year a sucess we're already thinking of new ways of making our robot better. @Andrew from Smoke and Mirrors....(Yes a 4 wheel drive base).

[R0k0v]

If we had Vex stuff with more powerful motors and all the kind of stuff we can use now than that would be perfect.

[JesseK]

The championships were awesome, for the most part. I've already explained the negatives in another thread (there were a couple) but essentially the best parts about it were in the Dome! The competition was amazing, and the other robot designs almost ingenious. Einstein's Daughters was the best I thought (very simple, robust, and effective) and it's a shame they or Jr. Bomb Squad didn't get picked for elims -- if they had things may have turned out very differently.

Our scouts and parents got a taste of what GOOD scouting can do, as was evident by our 11:45 bedtime Friday night before elims. QF-1/2 were easy, and SF-1/2 would have been easy if bots didn't break. Eh, that's life though.

I'm pretty sure ministang (111) figured out the same exact lockdown strategy we did for elims, as their first autonomous against us was identical to ours. We joked that the only strategy that could beat the proper execution of the lockdown strategy was the lockdown strategy itself, and we were very surprised in QF1/2 when it happened.