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Originally Posted by Sperkowsky
FIRST putting game specific items like pneumatic wheels is absurd.
I do not mean to sound this mean but seriously think this through. Pneumatic wheels are very useful this year. We bought the pneumatic wheel upgrade kit for the am14u3 the day it came out. It was also $350. How could you expect Andymark to include pneumatic wheels in the KOP essentially cutting down their profits substantially. Besides the fact that pneumatic wheels are not the only way to play this game and plenty of teams are going to show up with alternatives or the kit bot. Also many lower level teams do not even know what pneumatic wheels are essentially removing the edge from more knowledgeable teams. I watched the reveal video and pneumatic wheels were the first wheels to come to mind but many low resource Teams do not think like that.
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You mean like a multi-thousand dollar cRIO previously?
How about the game pieces?
Think about it.
Historically things were often put into the KOP to insure a more even playing field.
There's nothing very fair about the tires not being in there.
If the goal of COTS was to bring the lowest teams up, then AndyMark would have to service the teams with the least ability to make tires first. He has no such control in place now. So he sold out. If I wanted I could have bought all of Andy's tires. Then what? I cornered the market and blocked all the teams that had good reason to buy them. Now I have tires and the shop at FRC11/193 might not need those tires. Effectively blocking all the low resource teams. I wouldn't do that but I could do that and I bet many teams bought more tires than they need so, in a way, they did do that. I could have held that stock past the end of the build season then used it for my stuff for the handicapped or just liquidated it.
Keep in mind my stuff runs commodity trading for the Earth. I know how to play a market. I learned from the experts.
If profit overrides ethics you can bet you might not like what happens.
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Second point our school got rid of machine shops many years ago and outsourced everything to a vocational program. If you want to be a welder for. Instance you spend half the day in the vocational school welding and the other half back at our school for normal subjects. Therefore we started our rookie year without any tools at all the only place with tools being the wood shop for stage crew and the 2 wood shops down at the middle school. All 3 which were pretty much off limits. We continue to build up our capabilities while also obtaining sponsors. Like our waterjet cutting sponsor. Yesterday actually the head of buildings and grounds came by he looked at our workspace and said "we can make this a lot better" we ended up finding out he has a full Metal shop and would help us out with welding. He agreed to make new workstations for us a table for our mill and drops for pneumatics with quick disconnects. I am willing to bet if you can sell robotics to your school district you can convince them to support you.
Back to cots discussion though.
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Yeap we sent Electronics to the Vocational Technical school when the Technology programs couldn't support it. In the process in 1992 they sent me from Technology I & II (Technology II was actually made form me specifically I was the only student to ever take that new class that year. It is unclear it existed after that.) to Morris County Vocational Technical where I was Valedictorian in Electronics. They also put me on the bus with a bunch of students they intended to expel and had thus given up hope on. Then a few years later the Vocational Technical school gave up on Electronics and changed it to Cisco Technology. Then the County College of Morris gave up on it and wrapped it into Mechatronics. NJIT still teaches electronics I have a friend still paying his student loans from NJIT a decade later.
Making it another guys problem usually means it is still someone's problem.
COTS is the finest example of that - you make the problem to fabricate and do the logistics for it that of a professional.
Now I want to settle this - Mount Olive is very supportive of FRC11/193 and the requirements of the competitive aspect of FIRST these days. The COTS issue runs the risk that eventually the shop requirement will no longer be a requirement at all. Having seen this I have undertaken 2 actions. One I am collecting resources to run a shop separate from this program in the event they abandon supporting their own shops. This means a shop separate from my own shop and portable. Two I am considering from the advice of someone here on ChiefDelphi offering an award from those that fabricate and learn how to fabricate what they could have bought COTS. So even if the professionals eventually make it hard for those with the spirit to fabricate to do so and potentially win - their efforts are acknowledged.
So cause and effect.