First Choice 2020 -- For Real This Time!

https://www.firstchoicebyandymark.com/everything

It’s live!

Thoughts? Preferences?

This might be the year we get that new multimeter!

My thoughts:

Nothing really there to lower the BOM that much. Maybe they did that on purpose. I was hoping for Falcon or SparkMax.

The pneumatic wheels are interesting – a hint that we are having a rough terrain game, perhaps?

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A hint that they got overstocked last year :wink:

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Two things about last year that may apply also.

  1. In round one, they added more items late. So the initial look might not be complete.
  2. They had a lot of ‘nicer’ items in round two. So if you spent you credits round one you were hosed a bit.

Just things to keep in mind.

And yoga balls. Finally don’t an FRC game based on the british spy thriller The Prisoner.

Does anyone have experience with the robotextrusions parts?

Anyone able to list the amount of credits available in the first round? Still waiting to here from our team leads.

We have 580 credits

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For FTC… I wonder if they’re trying to unload more extras.

Did anyone else notice the ridiculous cost for the redline motor? Usually i think of 1 first credit being about 1 dollar. This can easily be seen by comparing the control system parts (pdp, vrm, pcm) to their actual price. So to see a redline for 50 credits while a cim is 20 credits was a little shocking…

So far I am little disappointed by what is available in first choice with not enough items like motor controllers, motors (at a reasonable price), or items I know will make it to the robot to lower the BOM cost.

Definitely grateful for first choice but with the rule changes I dont see many teams getting a benefit to their BOM with the quantities of the few useful items not being enough to go around

I kind of wonder if they saw that people were trying to game the system and changed prices around or held stuff for round 2… The selection is definitely not as good as last year.

@MrForbes I believe last year we received a 4ft length of 1×2 and jig for tapping and drilling. It’s beefy stock and has 3/8 inside corners, if that’s what you’re going for. It currently resides in our parts graveyard along with the Igus bags and throttle motors.

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50 credits did strike me as stiff, so it went into my heading of “Great Stuff, But Overpriced” in the guide I’m working on for local teams.

Knowing how much of the good stuff (which I’d normally Title Case For Emphasis, but Woodie kinda cornered the market on Good Stuff) came out in Round 2 this year, I’ll be advocating for a rather conservative Round 1 list on Pandamaniacs.

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Given last year’s rules which seem to be carried over, I’ll advocate a rather conservative round 1 for everybody who has any BOM concerns; only bid on things you’re confident you’ll use on the robot.

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Paging @ahartnet. Didn’t you do some credit analysis for last year? I’d love to see what you’re thinking for this time around.

I don’t think so. FC “prices” have never reflected cash value, or even desirability. There have often been items that seemed so cheap as to be a crazy bargain, and some that seemed laughably expensive.

Are those yoga balls from 2014 by any chance? They are categorized under FRC game pieces.

Negative. Read closely and you’ll see “FIRST Tech Challenge” printed on them, as they were from the 2016-2017 game Velocity Vortex.

Ah ok. Must have just been moved when they were added to fc. Or they are game pieces for 2020. /s

(I don’t do the gif reply often, but FIRST takes their game secrecy very seriously.)

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