Quote:
Originally Posted by magnets
This brings back memories of having a competition to see which kid could disassemble then reassemble the andymark super shifter the fastest. We got a team of three kids who could put both transmissions, assembled, wired and connected into our robot in about 10 minutes. It was a well rehearsed operation, but a total waste of time.
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This. The rules are the rules. We will all follow them to our best understanding. But with the lack of the identical spares rule this year, the elite and mid-range teams are being dragged down. And the bottom teams are hardly affected.
In past years, smart teams would have replacement parts ready to go for every system on the bot. Motor burns out? Unplug the anderson connector and pop on a new one. Good thing you had that ready to go and didn't have to waste time on putting new connections on it in the brief time before your next match. Gearbox breaks? That's why you took the time to machine a spare one. Maybe you even cleverly designed it so that a whole assembly could be changed out quickly without compromising the functionality of the robot. Teams that thought ahead and prepared for regionals were rewarded.
But now you have to choose between doing tasks in the pit that you certainly would have done in your shop, or eating into your 45 pound weight allowance because you don't want to have to assemble a versaplanetary during a time out in elliminations. And if you want to preform a radical iteration on your robot? That 45 pounds can disappear really quickly between spare parts, "modified cots parts", and actual new systems.
I can understand first wanting to level the playing field. And this ruling and strict interpretation of the meaning of a COTS part certainly accomplish that. But I think it's going too far. I was always really impressed when I saw a team get a crucial mechanism broken in match and come back out with a new one installed in such a brief time. Reminds one of the efficiency of a NASCAR pit crew. I'd rather be inspired by things like that than watch good robots not work because they couldn't be fixed in time. But maybe that's just me.