[WizenedEE]

Last year we just threw some surgical tubing to bounce balls away. I guess that did take a lot of work though, because people kept wasting time "stress testing" it by playing pinball.

I don't particularly like the idea of changing the rules mid-competition, but this really is unacceptable. We're supposed to be graciously professional -- we have build workshops on kickoff so that everyone can go to competition with something, and we all try to help each other out as much as we can.

However, if an experienced team makes the (flawed) design decision to not floor-load (which happens, we thought that no tubes at all would be on the floor), they would just waste all that work they did to make an arm completely? Seriously, it's a real shame if a team spends a ton of work on something and then can't use it, and because of this "cheap trick," it might have all been for naught (of course, not all teams will do it...)

Also to the people that are saying that this strategy is legal: Yes, that is the point of the thread. The author is saying that it IS legal and it SHOULD BE illegal. No amount of saying that they made a less-than-perfect design decision can negate the fact that they deserve to get something.