[lcoreyl]

If your goal is to level the playing field, i don't think this would achieve that. i see no "stop build" day resulting in upper/elite teams making MORE gains than lower teams in that extra time.

If your goal is to give the lower teams more time to avoid being a box on wheels and/or going from box on wheels to mildly competitive(even though this means the performance gap widens) then this could work. I could see that this goal would also be tied to avoiding losing rookie/new teams, which I certainly agree is a worthy goal. However, IMO this goal is already achievable by kitbot + WPILibrary + chiefdelphi + 30 lb allowance. If teams can't get a kitbot plus one working mechanism together then FIRST probably needs to do a better job telling rookies to just get on CD and ask for a design to try.

To give you a better idea of where my argument comes from: my team is very small, and so poor that I had to seriously consider whether I could afford putting in these last 2 cents:

-we've never had a practice bot, but we're trying to put one together right now (out of free spare parts)

-I don't think trying to make everything "fair" is a worthy goal.

-I DO support anything attempting to "level the playing field" by bringing up the lower teams. Anything which does this by limiting the upper teams I very strongly dislike. I'm not sure I would be doing this if not for the inspiration of what elite teams are doing.