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Originally Posted by dodar

Dude, at some point teams just need to step it up themselves. You see "top tier" teams building the robots they do at the levels they do because they are able to put their heart and souls into them. If you see them having to gout out to 2, 3, 4, etc.. teams to help them actually get a half competitive robot, then you will drop the total competitiveness of everyone.

The problem there is that some teams are simply incapable of building a half-competitive robot without help. Our team consists of fifteen people, two hand drills, two bladeless hacksaws, a ratchet set, a cutoff saw, and a virtually nonexistent budget. I challenge any "competitive" team to try to build even their most simple mechanism with those tools, and 80-90% of the students building it having never picked up a screwdriver in their lives, and then tell us that those teams are capable of lifting themselves up without outside intervention. Without help from another team, it's not going to happen in many cases.