[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Disclaimer: I disliked minibots as I felt it was a drain on resources for many teams. I'm just playing devils advocate.

<devils advocate>
How is this any different than what happened in 2010 with the collectors? Or has happened in the years since the early 2000's with the copying of 254/60's drive system? Or since 2003 with the TechnoKats transmissions? Point is that a lot of engineering is stealing from the best.
</devils advocate>

In the case of minibots the rules were written in a way to encourage copying of someone elses design during the build season. Mini-bots were specifically excluded from the witholding allowance to encourage bringing many of them so they wouldn't count against your robot witholding allowance.

In the case of the 2010 collectors you had to trade a new collector with other upgrade parts more carefully because of the weight of the system, but it is generally the same.

As for copying WCD most teams can't do that in the middle of build season and comply with witholding rules, and when WCD was introduced you really couldn't carry something like that in pre-made because the spare/replacement parts rules were far more restrictive.

The T-kats shifter they published the design for all to use after the season. Again you couldn't walk in to a regional with the parts pre-made slap them on and go.

The minibot you could see a few pictures and know most of the stuff we tested endlessly to figure out.