Coming from FRC, my team (5842) was assigned this number because they were the 5,842nd team to register. Why doesn’t VEX/RECF do the same? Is it too far gone to reset everything now?
I don’t see the reasoning behind that. It’s good to get to know teams by their numbers, I see no reason to reset that every single year
7 Likes
Is there a particular benefit to doing it this way?
3 Likes
Why?
Letting teams chose their numbers allows them to pick something (hopefully) meaningful or catchy.
It’s like our team getting named “Roboraiders team 1” instead of getting to pick one 
(we’ll change it one day 
)
5 Likes
it wouldn’t be every year, in this example your team number would be the nth team registered ever
2 Likes
its just a simple and clean way to assign team numbers, not saying that VEX/RECF (pls tell me who does this) should do it, there would be a lot of issues getting it to work
If you are suggesting we reassign team numbers each season based on when the team registered, it would be largely a non-starter. The team numbers persisting over many seasons end up representing an organization - like GER 44. Moreover, the fewer place values in your team number usually indicates the organization has been around quite a while. As other have indicated, some teams want specific numbers (if available).
I do not see the benefit of swapping numbers every season, geez I have too many clothing items with 9791 on them 
9 Likes
They used to, way way way back in the day.
That system kind of breaks for when you do letters and make teams Alphanumeric.
3 Likes
One of the local teams in Las Vegas was team 702, the Las Vegas area code which is fun.
Some of the teams I ran pursued low team numbers
64: nice round point of 2, Minecraft stack limit
69: obvious immature jokes
(Pretty sure these were the last 2 numbers under 100 available)
Most of the low numbers were taken in order of registration but if a team made a request about an available number they would let you request.
11 Likes
Maybe this topic begs a new question. What makes a team number cool?
In my opinion, 3 digit numbers with a repeated digit are cool. (323, 334, 229, 252 to name a few)
Also, numbers starting with 10. (1095, 1028 to name a few)
Or numbers starting with 31330…
7 Likes
love the casual team plug
6 Likes
I’m a fan of Team 23 TBH. I like the two digit team numbers.
5 Likes
I think one thing to remember, the numbers now represent organizations, not specific teams as the composition of the teams are pretty fluid over years.
4 Likes
because its fun to pick your own number. also it would be so boring for the teams numbers to jsut be in order. ther would never be teams like 99999 which is a really cool org and like @lacsap mentioned orgs become known for their number and its way easier to rember steam 515, 2029, 4082, 315, 62, 44, 110111, 323, 2775, or any other fun easy to roll of hte tounge number than 1589 , 1590 1591 alll the way up to 10,001
8 Likes
The VRC teams I mentor for have 43210, which is a fun little countdown number.
6 Likes
Making team numbers be in order of the first time the organization registered (mostly similar to how FIRST does it) would be good for showing how long an organization existed, but would leave the vast majority of teams with numbers they have no control over, and where they might not benefit that much from being earlier than another team (1389 vs. 1799 wouldn’t make much difference to me, but 8888 would be more easily recognizable than 1389). I feel like this system would provide the most benefit to organizations that registered their first teams early enough in the history of VEX to get a 1-2 digit number and then stayed active into the days of 3-4 digit (and especially 5-digit) teams. Under that system (and others, but especially that one), ideally the school would also have a way to regain their old number if they restarted their program but lost access to their original account (provided a system had been created to do this in Robot Events).
With the current system, organizations can choose whatever number they want as long as no one else is using it, or they can choose to get a randomly generated number. If an organization wants to, they can even choose the lowest number available, though this will not have a direct correlation to how old the team is, since many older teams will have 4-digit numbers, even random ones.
If teams had to register for a new number every year and numbers were in order of when they registered that year, this would just benefit the organizations with the financial/administrative freedom and luck to register their teams in the first few minutes of registration being open. Even if it was just teams getting new numbers based on how old the organization was compared to other teams, or whether they went to Worlds the previous year, I think most teams and organizations (especially the people who pay for team shirts and promotional material) would prefer to keep the same number from year to year rather than changing each year. (Maybe a few would switch if it was a one-time thing or was universally correlated with the previous season’s performance, though.)
6 Likes
When our program started (clean sweep season), they did not offer less than 4 digit numbers. That’s what my crusty brain recalls anyway.
3 Likes
Think it is time for history lessons again…
When VRC 1st started, there were way much lesser teams than now.
So every region was assigned a range of numbers that the teams can use, eg. 80XX were teams from Singapore, 29XX, etc…
So the plan was to look at the number, and you should kinda figure out which region the team was from.
but of course the numbering system broke down when regions started having uneven growth and when VRC keeps growing and growing.
19 Likes
We chose our zip code (14904) and that has given us some local support when we do fundraisers, as people and businesses recognize the number.
5 Likes