As my contribution to Summer CD, post your hot takes on FIRST. Can be FLL, FTC, FRC, FGC.
Rules:
My hot take: I like when the human player has an important role in the game. Because the future is not robots, its robots and humans working together.
Scouting is more fun than watching matches normally and if you can’t handle doing a single scouting shift i don’t know how you can actually enjoy FRC, like it’s literally just watching the robots how can you enjoy a robotics competition while hating watching robots. I can understand people who are frustrated by unnecessarily long/frequent scouting shifts that prevent them from doing other stuff at the competition though.
Bring back motor limits. #makepneumaticsrelevantagain
This! I’m on a team that has more than enough scouters so that shifts aren’t unnecessarily long, and the number of students slacking off and playing video games is insane. I enjoy scouting because it keeps me focused on the robots and, honestly, it’s just fun to sit in stands with friends taking notes on performance.
regional advancement will be better than district advancement once regional points are universal (@Cake converted me)
Rebuilding your robot to copy the best design imo is an insult to your design and strategy team.
Even (especially) if they’re the ones pushing for the redesign, right?
Backup teams should be assigned to playoff alliances at those alliances’ first loss.
You changed my mind about it, great take!
It’s okay for FRC to be expensive, FTC/VEX is there for teams that can’t afford FRC.
Mentors are underutilized on the vast majority of FRC teams.
To put it another way:
Almost every FRC team would have a better experience on and off the field if they weren’t so focused on being student-led, and truly embraced everybody as an important team member, regardless of age.
we need more defense and please make 2026 game not pickup from your side of the field, more collisions please
They should get rid of serpentine for the World Championship
Let Alliance 1 select the top 3 robots.
I know this is very unfair to the other teams in a division but… it could lead to some very highscoring matches. Einsteins would just be the best teams going head to head.
either that or top 15 (qualifying) from each division goes to a final Einstein alliance selection + playoff bracket.
My hot take: I like off-season competitions more than in-season events. The pressure of qualifying is off, it’s more chill, it’s easier to make connections with other teams, and you can goof off and have fun.
Edit: Apparently this is more of a luke warm take.
Similarly:
FRC isn’t meant to be fair. It’s a program building competition as much as it is a robot building one. FTC and so on ARE robot building competitions. However, FRC is meant to be a multi- year epic endeavor that is partially about building robots.
I’ve got a lot of hot takes, but here are my two biggest ones:
Second picks shouldn’t earn the same district ranking points for finals as the rest of their alliance. If I had it my way the second pick of the winning alliance at DCMP wouldn’t automatically qualify for Worlds and finals ranking points should be scaled based on alliance position: for example, the second pick on the 8th seed might get 90% of the regular points, the 7th 80%, and so on. This would still reward performance, but also incentivize teams who know they’ll likely be second picks to compete harder during quals so they’re selected earlier.
If you qualify for Worlds you should have to publish your cad and code and all impact essays and videos should be public. I think First as a community is better when we can learn from each other.
Top teams don’t post these things because it encourages copying without understanding rather than actually learning how they work.
People who claim they put students first and criticize the top teams because they are “mentor teams” don’t actually put students first they’re just salty they don’t win.
Two of my hottest takes are around FRC Game Designs:
Stronghold (2016) was one of the worst / most boring games in the last 10 years. Taking a step back from the “high-level play”, early events were often won by teams who could best drive over bumps on the ground. Combine that with the long field reset / defense changing times and scoring elements that would come dislodged mid match because of sheered or missing pins, it made for some of the longest, most draining spectator days in my 15+ years of FIRST.
Lunacy (2009) was a decent game sabotaged by a bad, new control system. The engineering challenge of a low traction field made for some really cool drive train and propulsion designs. The aspect of having to score in a trailer pulled by your opponents while protecting the trailer you are pulling from your opponent was a lot of fun. Could it have been better? Of course, but I don’t think it belongs in the “all time bad game” column.
