[EricH]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

I don't see how this helps. You build a practice robot, spend all your time tweaking and perfecting on that, then unbag just fast enough to mount the mechanism to the actual robot and do a quick integration test. Then you move on to the next mechanism...

If you don't have a total time limit, or a time limit per unbag, I can think of one very obvious loophole to any unbag rule with a limit on # of times: I bag up the robot once. Then, a few days later, I unbag the robot, and leave it unbagged until a couple of days before competition.

The basic idea is to allow a significant amount of time with the actual robot, theoretically enough to vastly diminish the return from having a practice robot. I suggest a hybrid between # of times you can unbag (which will limit the amount of what you're suggesting) and the total time (which will limit the amount of robots left out of the bag for quite a while before rebagging). I randomly picked a maximum of 3 times for a maximum of 10 hours total, partly to fit with the later text (I originally was going to go for 2 unbags, 6 hours total time).

You may want to take a look at some of the discussions of the Fix-It Windows--I think 2005 was the worst, something about 2 times for 10 hours,and that was just to build spare, replacement, and upgrade parts!--for the compromise suggestion given was effectively a Fix-It window of time, or an MI/MAR unbag period, however you want to see it.