Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris is me
(Post 1358127)
I think the options presented above are a false dichotomy. There is one extremely simple solution that nobody has mentioned that makes everyone happy. Have no bag, but have the first regional start at the end of Week 6 or 7 of build season. Everyone who feels burned out without a bag day and wants to stop working can just go to Week 1 or Week 2 regionals. Everyone who wants to work longer can go to later regionals. If you're in Districts, with unbag time and the Championship at the end you already "had to" keep working to be competitive - and you can still choose to work less hard after your first event if that really bothers you.
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Picone, while I agree with you that the most straightforward option is to eliminate and/or open up the bag solutions significantly, it's probably not the only, or the best way to solve these problems.
Realistically, the issue with the with holding allowance isn't really the weight, and I doubt it's really that you'd have to bring it in at the time that pits open on the first day of competition, but rather what counts as part of the withholding allowance.
As the rules are currently written, any fabricated component not in the bag counts toward your withholding allowance, which is too broad of a scope for such a rule, IMO. The withholding allowance should only count towards parts/mechanisms that are withheld from a robot, implying that the robot cannot function as with out them. For example, if a team chose to with hold their intake, or shooter, or catching mechanism - it counts towards their withholding allowance - and I think we can all agree with that.
But why the with holding allowance extends beyond parts that are not truly 'withheld' is beyond me, and now it forces teams to do things differently than they've almost always done, and that's to not make spare parts (or fewer of them), or assemblies, or choose not to upgrade their robot in favor of making spares. Personally, I think that as long as the spare is
IDENTICAL* to a part or assembly that was bagged with the robot, then it should not be considered as withheld, since it wasn't actually withheld, as much as not bagged with the original.
(*Identical meaning that it functions, performs, and is physically (within reason, say +/- .25"ish/ an ounce or two per 5lbs) the same as the original, if it does not, then it's an upgrade part...)
There's got to be some sort of happy medium on the withholding rules that both prevents teams from abusing the minor clauses, but also allows teams to have some reasonable collection of 'spare' parts. I don't know if the best way to handle this is by allowing for 'assemblies of COTS parts' to be considered as COTS components (and not fabricated) or by giving each team some amount in addition to their withholding allowance that can be allotted for spare parts.
All of that being said, considering that the 'formal' stance from the GDC seems to be to prevent the over lawyer-ing of the rules by teams, this whole situation is going to be an interesting one to watch. I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing a trend of teams bringing in boxes/bins of disassembled mechanisms - broken down into their most basic components, fabricated and COTS - and reassembled once in the pits as a way to get around the current restrictions...
