Quote:
Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog
An elongated build season means we will have clones and the teams with the best manufacturing resources will have the edge always. I do not wish to compete in an event where all robots are the replicas of RI3D or of 1114. I want my students to compete with a robot that they designed to the best of their abilities and resources.
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I disagree with this. Rarely do you see anyone directly copy a robot and if they do they are rarely super successful at it. However it does bring up the bottom of the competition. I would much rather see a somewhat working attempt at improving the RI3D robot than a robot that can't play the game at all. I also have seen way too many discouraged students on teams with limited mentor support that have robots that can't play the game, they leave the program uninspired.
We have a full year build season in VEX and yes you see a lot of copycat designs, but the best teams still win and the game is played at a very high level. The development of the meta game is one of the most interesting parts about VEX. Teams constantly improve both their robots and their strategy to beat the common robot designs.