Quote:
Originally Posted by DMike
4) Restricting holdback to 20% would prevent teams from major redesign's of major systems. I have seen many "bagged" robots that were not operable, only to go through a complete overhaul.
1) Practice robots are clearly an enormous advatage to teams that have the resources to complete them. Using an exact replica to practice with and revise, is no different than working on the one in the bag. Put a non-working bot in the bag, refine parts on your "practice bot" install them on Thursday. Teams could continue to use their "practice bot" for their intended purpose, PRACTICE. Driver traing, game strategy would remain a huge benifit alone.
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I don't understand how so many people can complain about practice bots, but not about withholding allowance. A practice bot is just an effective way of using your withholding allowance to continue to develop components. You can't just ban teams from making practice bots, but keep a withholding allowance when you argue that practice bots are against the spirit of FIRST build season. Either be content in the argument that practice bots are a way to utilize the withholding allowance, or eliminate both.
EDIT: Fun fact, there used to be a time in FIRST where there was no withholding allowance. It was just 6 weeks, can't bring anything into competition except tools, and you couldn't even write code between ship day and competition day. It would be interesting to see if there was any data on average scores before and after withholding allowance was a rule.