Ohio has went from 13 to 15 world qualification spots. Great news! However, the spots changed drastically. They were
{Excellence, Design, Robot Skills, Programming Skills, Tournament Champions, Finalists, Top 2 Unqualified Programming, and Top Unqualified Robot Skills}
And now they are
{Excellence, Design, Programming Skills, and Tournament Semifinalists~Champions}
Personally, I’m opposed to this non-skills focused qualification (actually, I don’t like when spots are given to finalists either, since it’s possible to luck through the tournament). I would much rather have had one spot added to both top robot and programming skills. Or a round robin with 8 alliances to determine the true top 4.
This year’s rules basically make it so that the best robot, for the most part, has at least a decent robot/programming skills (though it is possible to have a skills bot).
Any thoughts, criticisms, ideas, comments?