Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Smith
A rule (or game design) that lessened the strategic benefit of cheese-caking, while leaving the option to help other teams out would likely be well received. One idea I floated on the post a while back regarding the Q/A banning all help, was to potentially allow unlimited cheese-caking through X time (Friday quals at a regional?), and only limited (2-5lbs?) changes after alliance selection. If a well meaning team wants to help another team overhaul their robot, they could and should... but it shouldn't provide an overwhelming strategic advantage to the giver. It should be able to be scouted, or perhaps posted at the inspection station... so the gift has made the team inherently more valuable to other alliances. To me, there is a distinct difference between cheesecaking a team to help them, and cheesecaking a team to help myself.
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I expect that this whole situation will lead to new rules that won't be particularly popular. The game manual is full of rules that have similar origins. Many people blame this game for driving the extreme cheesecake, but teams will find uses for it in all future games.
At Championship, the extreme examples were made more feasible by: (1) the long delay between the end of qualification matches and alliance selection and (2) having a 4th bot on the alliance that could be kept off the field for modification. Item #1 could be addressed by having the final qualification matches, alliance selection, and playoff matches on the same day (not something I would favor). Item #2 could be could be addressed by going back to 3-team alliances with a backup bot list.
I like your suggestion of limiting hardware changes after qualification matches are complete.