[EricH]

The first question to ask is not "What is the main challenge?". It is "How do we WIN the ______?". This last is a question asked by companies all the time--"How do we WIN the contract? Make money?" For FIRST, the blank can be filled in with "game" or "competition" or even "long-term goal of changing the culture".

When you ask what the main challenge is and what the extra objectives are, you immediately get tunnel vision--you focus in on the "main" challenge, possibly only to find that maybe you missed something important.

Now, you bring up contracts and X is the main thing and Y is "nice to have". I agree, someone who builds something that can Y but not X should not get the contract. BUT!! In the real world, the customer sets the requirements, not the contractor. Any requirement left vague by the customer can be interpreted by the contractor--but if the customer sets the requirements clearly, and the contractor doesn't meet them, it's the contractor's fault. (BTW, this is why we read the manual, as it is the requirements set by the customer.)

In application to FIRST, the customer has set some requirements, but really only on the technical side of the equation. Gameplay sets some others. But... they haven't set X as the main thing and Y as "nice to have". They may have done the exact opposite. Or they may have said, "Your objectives are X and Y. You can do either or both. Good luck," and left the teams to figure out which is most important to them.