Quote:
Originally Posted by SenorZ
I see this being a correct ruling for the following example:
Team A is a high seeded alliance, and picks team B to be their 3rd alliance partner in the elims. Team A then sends their pit crew to team B's pit and adds components that team A built, so that team B can do what team A wants.
I've seen this happen, and I think THAT is against the spirit of FIRST. Essentially it is one team making a second robot on top of another team's chassis. This is very RARE, but I feel it is wrong.
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Why is this against the spirit of FIRST? 118 has been team A several times in your above example, and in each and every case team B has been incredibly happy to work with us on improving their robot, many times expressing how inspirational the experience was. Sometimes this helps the team be more competitive in future events. (I remember leaving our mini-bot deploy system with a team who went on to use it at Worlds with much success.)
In fact FIRST encouraged this type of practice back in 2011. Since then I see this type of thing happening quite frequently, with varying degrees of how complex the added components may be. Every year we talk about what types of things we could do to help other robots in our alliance, or even the opponents when co-op points come into play. Ideas this year included devices which allow teams with no tote manipulation to be able to put yellow totes on the step, allowing for co-op bonus in matches where it may not have been possible. I think this type of thing adds another level of creativity and is very much in the spirit of "coopertition" that FIRST feels so strongly about.
This Q&A response really limits some creative things teams can do to work together to be more successful. This years rules allowing for tethered robots has maybe opened up how "drastic" this practice can be, but I'm still not sure it's wrong, and the ruling is a disappointing precedent to set for future years.