[davidthefat]

I guess I'll write it here:
Well, I am on a campaign within my team to start running the team more like a company. We are not so high budget, we start from scratch or in debt every year and it really worries me. The year before (break away) we almost could not even participate due to bad financial planning. There is a majority in the group that want to sacrifice a well performing robot in lieu of going to a second regional. Keep in mind, last year was the only year we went to a second regional due to private donations. It was great, but I am looking ahead and thinking of sustaining our team. However, those particularly in non technical groups, want to go to a second regional. I don't blame them. But that second regional burned through half our budget last year and we started this year $400 in debt. This really worries me. But good thing is that we got aggressive on sponsoring and fundraising this year.

You can infer a lot from this. This is my last year, I wish to leave a legacy that would allow the team to sustain for a couple years longer, but I am faced with a great opposition. Especially with all the technical members graduated, except for programmers, no one can make a robot on our team. They see doing research and development during the off season a waste of money. I see it as essential. R&D actually costs a fifth of what a second regional would be (Including lodging, food and ect) I would like to have the kids start out next year with a couple thousand dollars in the bank with a database of different drive trains and code to go along with it since I won't be able to mentor.

So the bottom line is I would like to design and develop drive systems during the off season. That would allow us to be more competitive during competition, allow us more time to debug the drive code (majority of time consisted of this), let the drivers practice, build a practice bot, leave behind a legacy of CAD and code for the next years and to train rookies in skills that go into building a robot.