[Ben Martin]

I think a combination of things has contributed toward greater team success

1) 2013 had a game piece that was manufactured more consistently than 2012's was, thus making it easier for teams to shoot in a repeatable fashion, and thus it was easier to score points

2) More COTS components at cheaper prices at several "one-stop FRC shops" makes it easy for teams to find affordable components to build their robots

3) Besides RI3D, having more teams in FIRST means more testing videos uploaded to Youtube and other sites. Also, all the old videos from past games don't go away--the online resources for teams are expanding each year. Teams like 1114 have excellent resources about how to optimize your drive. By the end of week 2, a little searching of Chief Delphi could show that a balanced 8" pneumatic wheel or banebots wheels could be used to shoot discs. There were also videos showing passive 10-point hangs, and shortly after there were videos showing how a bucket could be used to index discs.

I like having examples available to make having a competitive robot accessible to all teams, and I think having COTS used (like RI3D did) in the examples makes it even easier for teams to recognize what they need to purchase to make the 'template' robot, without having everything necessarily laid out with instructions like the KOP drive is.

Is selling COTS subsystems outright, like a COTS shooter or COTS hanger, really the way we want to go, though? If we look at 2011, a COTS minibot? We already have COTS drives and COTS transmissions, which certainly have dramatically increased the performance level of many teams. A LOT of integration still certainly has to be done. At what point do the individual components become so few teams lose the 'fun' of designing and building it themselves? I'm not sure.