drawer / General
The event in early January that opens the season: the new game is revealed and the build period begins.
also calledKickoff SaturdayGame reveal
where you actually meet Kickoff
Kickoff is the most consequential Saturday of your season. The game animation drops and within hours your team has to read the manual, argue about scoring priorities, and decide what the robot must do. Teams that lose their season usually lose it here — by opening CAD before anyone has read the rules, or by chasing every scoring element instead of picking two.
Free and structured, and none of them need an account to read.
1lesson
the jargon travels in packs
General
The intense period after Kickoff (historically ~6 weeks) when teams design and build their robot before competitions.
read the entryMechanical
The components FIRST provides to every team each season as a starting point for the robot.
read the entryMechanical
A program giving teams credits to select specific Kit of Parts components from partner vendors.
read the entryGeneral
The flagship high-school program where teams have a few weeks to design, build, and program an industrial-size robot to play that season's game.
read the entryKickoff is one of 70 entries in the catalogue. The guides are where these words get used in order, instead of one at a time.