[KrazyCarl92]

While I am disappointed in the implications of this decision for the competitive value of our team's robot, I understand why FIRST made this decision and I can't be upset at them for making a change that they feel is necessary for the safety of volunteers, teams, and spectators.

From a strategic stand point, it's difficult to quantify the impacts. It could be up to 24 points per match less that we can score, but the average will probably be somewhere between 3-9. It is hard to tell because we don't know exactly how those thrown frisbees translate into high goals.

It's easy to say that our strategy would have changed with the new rules from day 1, but I cannot really be sure that it would have. What I mean is that the difference between the rules on day 1 and day 45 has been marginalized for us. With these juxtaposed we see that climbing is more valuable and floor pickup is less valuable than it previously was. On day 3ish we decided there was a trade off based on our resources for really 2 types of robots climbing: and shooting or floor pickup and shooting. We can't say for sure if we would have changed our decision if the rules had been as they are now. In fact, I doubt we would have.

This just means we have even more work to do for continuous improvement of our robot, and it makes scouting, strategy, and alliance selections even more important. This does not change that I am thrilled about the robot we bagged for competition last night, and despite diminishing the competitive advantage of our robot I am still excited to see what we can do to make it even better.