[dodar]

Originally Posted by Whippet

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.

Not with that attitude. Other teams help other teams(more unfortunate than themselves or not) all the time. But teams that build amazing machines cant send half a build team to help a less fortunate team for an entire build season to make sure they can move and gather a ball for a regional/competition.

And yes, I've seen teams with the minimalist of tools and building in garages build elimination caliber robots.