[Nuttyman54]

The issue that most of us have is that the literal intepretation of the rules is at odds with common practice and how we feel Gracious Professionalism should work at competition. Unfortunately, it appears that the GDC intends something closer to to the literal interpretation, based on their response. There's a bit of a grey area with COTS parts in terms of assemblies of all COTS items being considered FABRICATED ITEMS, but some small changes are explicity no longer legal:

-Custom versions of VersaChassis style tubing (stock tube with holes drilled in at at equal spacing). Some teams make this themselves with holes on all sides, or with a different spacing. They can't loan this to other teams at events.

-Slightly modified COTS parts, eg Banebots wheels or sprockets which have been lightened or broached. I have broached 1/2" round or plain bores out to essentially make parts that are equivalent to out-of-stock COTS parts, but they are still a FABRICATED ITEM.

As far as the legality of one team fabbing parts for other teams before or at competition, I would make the argument that if Team A makes parts for Team B, as long as Team B was involved in deciding what parts needed to be made and Team B installs it on their robot, they are sufficiently involved in the process to satisfy the Q&A. The other solution is to consider Team A a sponsor of Team B.

Ultimately, extremely literal interpretations of the materials useage rules are going to cause problems, because there's a spectrum from COTS all the way to billet hogout. Drawing a line anywhere in there is bound to have exceptions.

What most people seem to agree on here is that it's not right to arrive at competition with a pre-built, bolt-on solution to a game objective, and simply finding a robot to slap it on to. This sounds an AWFUL LOT like what's in the huge blue box in 4.1 that defines what kinds of COTS assembiles are and aren't legal. It seems to me that a better solution rather than the strict interpretation presented by the Q&A would a blue box like EricH described, which explains that the intent is not to have other teams provide bolt-on mechanisms to partners and gives some examples. Now, this does mean that some common practices would be considered illegal (eg, bolting on spare intakes), however that is more easily remedied by coming up with ways to build versions at competition with teams, without limiting the small parts sharing and slightly modified COTS items that are extremely common. Don't try to codify what is and isn't a pre-made assembly in the rules. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...


This issue is rearing its ugly head this year because of the incentives provided within the game rules to maximize the utility of late round picks in a game with diminishing retuns for high level alliances and the resource and space limiations. These robots are being turned into "enablers" for their alliance partners. Think about it this way: If I'm picked for elims, and I refuse to be cheesecaked, force my alliance members to let me try to stack totes and end up getting in the way or knocking over a stack, I may have just cost my alliance the event. I guarantee you that feels worse than letting them modify my robot to help my alliance win.

On a lighter note, last season the food item was Corndogs, which GameSense ate at the end of our Season Finale show. This year seems to be Cheesecake, so I won't complain about doing that again. Can we make it Steak and Lobster next year?