I have a lot of kids who want to be on my robotics team, but I don’t know what the maximum number of people on a team is for the high-stakes competition. Some people want to be on my team and idk how many are allowed. Please help me with this confusion.
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I don’t know if there is a limit, but I would keep my team to four or five people. Not everyone can work on the robot at one time, so having one person that codes, one person that notebooks, and two people that build/design worked for my team.
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I’m not sure the actual limit but I doubt anymore than 6 (maybe even 7) would be fun for anyone on your team
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I’d say 5 or 6 people would be best, just make sure everyone gets along and everyone actually shows up to practice.
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My team we have 16 people it is a bit chaotic but fun. yes there are going to be some people that do nothing and just mess around but other then that it will be ok.
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My team had six members this year, and I still think it was too many. I would recommend 3 or 4.
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Alright. Thank you for your help, all of these have been very helpful.
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You have a competition team that has 16 people? I must ask why you didn’t just do like two teams of five and a team of 6 or something like that
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This tends to come up each year, and the consensus is typically ~4 is best, 5+ mostly increases the number of students with little or nothing to do. Four gives a team one spare member outside the drive team, which is useful for scouting and as a backup if someone cannot make an event.
Consider also that tournaments cannot be expected to have space for very large teams. You will typically be provided with one table that has 4-6 seats. Overburdening the facilities is no fun for anyone.
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It really depends on the commitment/availability of your team members. If not everyone is committed and can’t come often, 8 people is enough. If everyone is very commited, 4 people is a good amount.
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This might help compile your data!
How many on your team?
- 1-2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6-7
- 8-10
- 11+
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voters
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A couple of observations -
- Make sure your key members are at tournaments (builder, designer, and programmer roles).
- Normal season tournaments tend to be lean 3-4 members.
- Worlds - you need to have additional resources that benefits flow - dedicated scouting team and pit crew at MS level. 6-7 members.
Mileage will vary. Too many is problematic in many cases, though one season I judge IQ region championship - and one team had 20 kids there, and all could explain what their roles were … Unicorns do exist! 
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generally 3-5 is a good amount but if it’s a private team also you need to make sure you have enough people to actually fund it. in over under our team went to 5 sigs 5 locals regionals and worlds and bought new parts for about 5 robots and it came out to around 10k per person for 5 ppl (this includes everything including flights and hotels)
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If you have no experience, a larger team isn’t a bad idea. My team last year was made up of all new kids except me, so it worked decently well. Everyone was able to learn some stuff and while it was definitely chaotic, it worked.
An organization in my region have around 10 kids per team. They have specific jobs – not a lot of builder-programmer-driver-notebookers, but they’ve been pretty successful thus far.
as someone who has been on two, three, four, five and 6+ person teams I think 4 is best for less experienced teams but often three is plenty for more experienced teams and can avoid conflict because everyone has jobs to do.
There is no limit but the efficient max would be like 5 before some kids just aren’t participating
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Alright, thank you guys. This has been very helpful in choosing the best possibly suited people for my team. I appreciate the help.
well we tried that but we dont get much budget to register or much budget at all.
I think a 8 person team is too much, Tenton runs a lot of 3 or 4 people teams
There is no limit to this, but it would be best to keep it <8 people, as this can keep things non-chaotic, productive, and can help with inspections during competition.
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