[sanddrag]

I hate that to be truly competitive in this sport it's now almost required to have a practice robot. The part I really dislike is that we are incurring all these additional costs to have something sitting in a bag, while we continue work on an identical copy. In that regard, bagging is rather pointless, and does little other than imposing additional costs on the teams who do have the means to do a practice robot. You are simply putting yourself at a serious disadvantage if you don't have one. You're buying more time essentially. And the methods and standards by which we work imposes significant significant additional costs and work hours on the team. Yes a practice robot gives a definite advantage, but it also gives A LOT of additional workload. It's not to be taken lightly, and it's not for every team. It's twice the welding hours, twice the COTS parts costs, twice the fundraising to pay for it all, and the additional time investment of development and practice.

Our build season runs from January 5th until March 27th, and it's torture on personal lives. I have over 400 hours into this already. As a team, we have over 5800 people-hours into it this season, and we aren't close to being done yet. It would be nice to have a hard date that says we get to go home and sleep, but we aren't part of a sleeping competition. We can sleep on March 31st after our second regional.

The part I do like though is that it gives more students the opportunity to be a part of the robot wiring and assembly and gives them more opportunities to design, test, iterate, and refine.