Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'

[Morgan Gillespie]

We can sit here and argue till the cows come home, yet there are a few shared points between most people.
1. FIRST is fair
2. There is still luck involved but it is not very large amount
3. Some teams start off each season with a large sum of money, while other teams start off with no money
4. Some teams have large machine shops, while other teams have no shop
5. FIRST is trying really hard to have an "easy" objective in each years game that a team with a working robot can do and still contribute to the score
6. As long as we keep to alliances there will always be a last pick on each alliance

Now lets take a look at team 195, let us look at what some people would call, "success"
Previous to championship they had

• 2006 - UTC New England Regional - Radio Shack Innovation in Controls Award

• 2004 - Bash at the Beach - Top Seed

• 2004 - NJ Regional - Sportsmanship Award

• 2004 - Caulfield Bryer and Perkins Entrepreneurship Award

• 2003 - Bash at the Beach Champions

Does that not make 195 a successful team? Of course they are a successful team, but they had never won a regional or their division. Yet at championships in 2006 they were selected to join our alliance. We then went on with them and 968 to win Newton and then to become world finalists.

What I am saying is if a team wants to win that doesn't necessarily mean 1st place in every event. All a team needs to do is find something they can do and do it well. They need to get a working base before they can make a shooter or a harvester. They need a working base before they begin to set sights on the harder goals. Just get a working bot, try your best, and put yourself out there. Not all teams that get to alliance selection have in depth scouting and know everything about every team. If you know you aren't going to alliance selection put your bot and your team out there.
Too many good bots have I seen go down the tubes because the team tried to do too much.
Even team 25 cannot do it all. We could not pick up from the floor, in fact we had one of the most difficult bots to human load. What did we do? We trained out human player long hours to learn how to get them in.

In every competition there will be powerhouse teams and there will be small teams. Yet, in this competition we have alliances, where one team cannot win it all. As long as we keep alliances and FIRST makes an "easier" objective, I believe the game is fair.

Side note: Anyone remember team 25 pre-2000? Back before 2000 team 25 never won an award. From their rookie year of 97 till 99 there was no "success". Then in 2000 we won NJ then our division and then championships. From then on team 25 has continued to be a successful team.
Our first couple of years were rocky, why should we expect anyone else's to be different?

[MikeDubreuil]

Originally Posted by Karthik

I guess Beatty has been so lucky over the years, that they've ended up winning 4 Championships. The Poofs winning SVR eight years in a row, totally random.

I think that's a bad comparison. Those teams aren't good... they're unbelievably fantastic to the point of domination. It's comparing an extreme to the status quo. For instance... the US has a good economy: look at Google. The rest of the economy is going OK but Google outperforms most companies by a long shot.

It's my belief that Ken is right in saying most "good" teams have fairly random success (125 for instance). One year floating in great and others in low. Some teams are great and consistently do well (Delphi teams). Some teams dominate (Beatty).

[Brandon Martus]

Let's let this topic cool off for a bit. This will re-open tonight after 6pm EST. (Will one of the moderators please re-open if I don't get to it. Thanks)

[Chris Fultz]

From the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

fair
Function: adjective
a : marked by impartiality and honesty : free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism
b : conforming with the established rules :

***
Wow, I am feeling a lot of love (not) in this thread - Brandon, thanks for the cool down period.

From the definition above, I would say absolutely FIRST is fair. Everyone starts the same day, gets the same rules, gets the same kit. Everyone has the same opportunity to recruit mentors and sponsors and create great machines.

Is everyone as succesful at doing that - no, they are not. Do veterans do better - probably - they have more experience - but that does not make it unfair.

We also need to remember that we all have different definitions of success. I subscribe to the "it's not about the robots theory" and see success in so many teams that is way beyond what their robot does or does not do on the field. How many students are moving to engineering careers, how many are getting scholarships due to FIRST involvement. How many college students stay engaged after high school. What new technology or capability did your students learn. I could go on. If your only definition of sucess is the robot on the field, then we only have three successful teams each year - the three that win the Championship. I don't believe that to be true.

A new Rolls-Royce mentor went to the IndianaFIRST forums last Saturday. One of his comments to me was "When I saw how many colege kids stayed involved, I knew it was something special".


Sorry for the Karthik-like response, but since he went short, someone had to step up.