[Monochron]

I have two main points here to make.

1. I like the Stop Build method for one reason: it sets up a window in which you work on your robot. It enforces a challenging time limit to prevent teams with a huge amount of resources from designing and constructing for months. It helps level the playing field by imposing an even degree of difficulty.

2. Allowing teams to build and practice with a second robot breaks that level playing field. Like you say, teams that have the resources to do it, more or less, do not have that 6 week limit placed on them. Sure, they must do their building on a proxy bot, but the action of physical construction is where you iron out your unforseen problems.

The way I always saw Ship Day or Bag 'n Tag days was a way to ensure every team got the same amount of time to work (and as it has been posted before, that was the original intent of the rule). Now that teams continue work/training/debugging on a proxy bot they are breaking that limit of 6 weeks. The 6 week limit is a good thing, it is the same as having all Regionals on the same day and allowing teams to build up until that day.

FIRST shouldn't be removing the limit, they should be enforcing it strictly by disallowing work on a proxy bot. Basically, disallowing proxy bots. How they enforce that . . . I'm not sure. But the level playing field time limit has to be preserved.