[Ben Martin]

It is unlikely that FIRST would institute a 'Tools Down' policy-- every year, there is a snowstorm or some other uncontrollable event in some part of the world that teams aren't prepared for that shows the need to have at a minimum a withholding allowance.

I answered #2 because I think its benefits (more cost savings and practice time for teams overall will elevate the program as a whole) to me outweigh issues of burnout. Some of us meet every day, but a lot of teams don't. FTC and Vex work this way, and I don't see why FRC can't too. I am always surprised how much improvement I see out of FTC teams at later competitions versus their first event.

The new "thing that winning teams do" would likely be rebuilding whole robots after viewing early week events (as required, anyway). It happens now somewhat with the practice bot system, but total rebuilds would occur to a greater degree than they do now. Many teams would need to adopt the paradigm that the robot that they built over 6+ weeks might need to be completely overhauled in order to adapt to the competition if they want to win (as a captain/first pick, anyway).