I believe the quantity, quality, pricing, and availability of COTS components for competitive robotics teams directly correlates to the sustainability and success of many teams.

For example, our offseason robot was 80% COTS parts, and it was one of the best robots we've ever made in regards to what we had to work with. Because of all of the COTS components, we were able to put the robot together with very few meeting opportunities, very little machining resources, a small amount of time, and a small team of students. The only thing that held us back at competition was a terribly mounted pneumatic cylinder (which I take the blame for) that kept falling off. Everything else worked flawlessly and beautifully, and more importantly, the reliability and success of the COTS components inspired my students to utilize more COTS components in the future as well as got them excited for the new season.

With all the amazing COTS parts available to teams, I'd say a team is at a disadvantage if they *don't* abuse the COTS opportunities available to them, especially with the new VEXPro lineup coming Wednesday, which I'm sure will only prove this statement further.

With this improvement to the average team's success, the average team is going to be more inspired to continue on in FIRST, and will feel more capable of their abilities to design competitive robots regardless of resources, which will definitely keep them in the game for longer.