[EricH]

Originally Posted by holygrail

I’ve always been impressed with the ability of the small schools to remain competitive with larger schools with more resources, but as challenges become more difficult and the number of teams competing grows, it seems that the “resource gap” may become harder and harder to bridge.

This is dealt with in game design, as much as possible.

It's been a long time since the FRC Game Design forum was openly used by the GDC members to collect game ideas, but http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...59&postcount=1 gives a pretty standard opener for the overall design (specific elements got their own threads). Particularly note the first two ground rules, quoted here:

- The game should provide a sufficiently difficult challenge that it will stress the abilities of the students and engineers on the teams to design and build a solution.

- The game should allow active participation by teams with widely-varying levels of resources.

Another of the ground rules indicated that ingenuity of design was preferred over advanced fabrication methods.

That said, you aren't going to be able to account for team resources (school size, shops, funding) in any way, shape or form that satisfies everybody. Whether it's limited parts sets, multiple leagues/divisions, or no second robot, someone's going to be unhappy. This may be part of why VRC and FTC are gaining popularity, as you can be competitive in those without a large group, or a large budget, or a large shop. OTOH, if you're a "low-resource" team in FRC, you can still be very competitive, especially if you're smart about it.