As usual, a lot of good discussion on ChiefDelphi. Thanks for joining in.
To me many of the arguments echo past debates about 100's of other developments in FIRST: The Kitbot Chassis, Gamepad Controllers, Expanding Motor Choices, Leaving the Small Parts, Inc. Catalog, Team Cooperation to build "Twin" robots, The Business Models of companies like Banebots, AndyMark, VexPro, West Coast Robotics, Cross the Road Electronics...
In every one of these debates, I come down on the side of more capable robots, in particular, the side of helping the lower resourced teams put a robot on the field that can actually play the game. If we reach some future where we have nothing but 100's of capable, cool, cookie cutter robots that, despite their coolness & capabilities, are not inspiring kids, then I may change my mind, but at this point that future seems so remote that I am not losing any sleep over it.
I can't speak for any team other than BOOM DONE. but I believe a major focus for all the 72 hour build teams is to raise the level of competition for all by helping the low resourced teams (read more about BOOM DONE.'s motivation and goals
here).
Helping raise the lower end of the capability spectrum helps everyone in my view. Certainly it will help the many would be Box of Rock teams, teams that end up with a robot that kinda sorta drives and does little else. And, there are still a LOT of teams in this category. This hurts everyone. It makes the games less interesting to watch and to play. It distorts the seeding system. It is no fun for anyone, least of all the teams that feel like they let a couple dozen alliance partners down.
Providing teams a window into the design process, including prototyping concepts (both successes and failures), discussions about what is hard and what is easy, etc. is going to be a very effective way to help raise the overall capability of FIRST robots.
Let me give a specific example. I recall Paul C. talking about tetras at a competition in 2005 where he said something like, "Picking up tetras is easy. Putting them down quickly, effectively & reliably, right where you want them? THAT's hard!" I think a lot of teams would benefit from hearing that when they still have time to do something about it.
There are more reasons for doing this but for me that is perhaps the biggest one.
Joe J.