[PandaHatMan]

I agree with the bagging policy. It gives all teams an equal timeframe to work on their competition bot. If teams work after bag date on an identical bot to improve it, they have to spend time at their first competition to make identical changes to that bot or swap mechanisms.

The concept behind FIRST is to make a marketable product in a 6-week timeframe, and compete with it. Bagging the robot makes it possible to keep build season separate from competition season. However, you can't exactly shut the team members brains off after bag and tag, so FIRST allows you to carry in a certain amount of fabricated parts for last minute adjustments.

Last year, our team went into our first regional a 3rd level climber. We failed miserably, and between our first and second regional, built a shooter to replace our climber. We spent almost half of the first day changing our robot over and missed several practice matches. It's a sacrifice we had to make to improve our bot after bag.