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Originally Posted by Jon Stratis
Define "stay competitive". There are literally thousands of teams out there that don't build two robots, and many of them are still competitive. Over the past 7 years, my team has made it to elims every single year - winners once, finalists 3 times, semifinalists 3 times, and quarter finalists 4 times. There were only two events we didn't make it to the elims at. I would say we're competitive, yet we've never built a second robot.
FIRST needs a stop build day because there are still teams out there that have to ship their robot to their competition. Simply put, they live too far away from an existing regional to make transportation for a robot practical. Is it fair for those teams to loose out on one or more weeks of working on their robot?
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We would need to see statistics on the percentage of robots at championships that build 2nd robots to know one way or the other. My bet is that every team on Einstein does. There are teams that are too far to bring their robot, but have the capability to bring 45 pounds of extra parts, all of their tools, and COTS parts to a regional? I'd be curious as to how that is possible. If not then is it fair to allow anyone to bring that stuff?
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Originally Posted by Steven Smith
I think its fair to say that there are many mechanisms within FIRST in which more money can help with success. Larger teams can be more successful than smaller teams, and they cost more to feed/clothe/travel with. Going to more regionals increases your competitiveness, but can drastically increase your annual budget requirements. And yes, as you mention, building two robots costs more... but you also get to give students even more hands on time assembling and testing. Most teams will have some form of a constraint to work around, whether it is financial, build space access, number of mentors, commitment of students, parent/teacher support, etc. Should we not cap all of these things as well, so a team doesn't have an advantage because they have 10 engineers working as mentors while another team has 2?
I know it isn't 100% fair that teams with more money can be more successful, but in order to implement "balancing" you essentially end up capping the amount that can be donated to a team. If a larger sponsor or larger team is able to support the additional cost, and inspire students in the process, I don't see a reason to artificially limit teams for the sake of fairness. There are already a number of "KOP" style competitions that cater to those seeking a pure technical challenge where the goal is to build the best product you can out of a very limited number of parts, with limited input from adults. They fill a role, but the intent is different than the mission of FIRST.
Steven
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I think you misinterpret my tone and purpose. Capping money, or limitations on it isn't the problem at all. Wasting it is. If everyone is going to build two why make teams waste that money. Let them use that couple of thousand on attending another regional. One of the biggest reasons for the district model is to allow teams multiple events. Students would learn more from attending two regionals and iterating their design between them, than refabricating a second bot.
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Originally Posted by Orion.DeYoe
You are making the same mistake that most non-practice-robot people make. Building a second robot is not easy (my team builds one)! Not only do we have to fabricate, assemble, and wire double the number of parts, we also can't use quick fixes to problems. The reason for this is that just slapping a piece of tape or something on a problematic mechanism isn't repeatable, your practice robot won't function the same as your competition robot if you're not really careful. It forces you to build better robots from the start.
My team has the time, knowledge, budget, build space, and manpower to build two robots and we use every last drop of our resources to make it happen. By the end of the build season we have earned that second robot. A practice robot is not an unfair advantage as many seem to think.
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We build a second robot. I also did not claim it was an unfair advantage. If youll read my post its about what the POINT of all of that is. Sure it "forces you to build a better robot", but so does have the extra time to develop and iterate. Why should you waste all of your resources duplicating what you have already and not instead putting them to better use?