[mathking]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Trust me, I'm not forgetting this is an engineering sport. But breaking the rules is not engineering. If I issue a requirement for a contract, and you come back with a design that "technically" meets that requirement, but doesn't meet the intent of what I want accomplished, I'm not going to issue you that contract. Sure, you found a way to satisfy my requirements, but it's not the product I want to pay someone to produce. Engineering involves finding solutions to problems, not merely sidestepping them.


Further still, bringing a practice robot to an event isn't finding a novel strategy that "breaks the game," it's bending the rules. It doesn't even seem to meet your "Zebracorn" design philosophy, as it's not even a design choice. The only cultural value you seem to be stressing with this move is trying to thumb your nose at the GDC (at best).

I agree with this. Some of the most important tasks my team and my classes undertake are the ones for clients. Learning to make something that the client or customer wants is important. And yes, sometimes a really novel approach is awesome. But if you submit a bid, get a contract and produce a final product that technically satisfies the the terms in the bid but is not what the client really needs or wants you are not going to keep getting clients.

Breaking the game, to my reasoning, isn't finding a loophole in the rules about spare parts. It is great to think about the rules of the game and come up with an off the wall strategy that may never have been considered by the GDC. Such as figuring out you can redirect soccer balls right back into a goal with the right bot in a fixed position. And when that is a strategy goal you should always prepare for the possibility that someone clarifies or changes the rule and takes that strategy off the table.

All that said, I see what teams likely want this year. If you can bag two complete robots, you can effectively absorb twice as much damage. It makes practice field work less risky, since you aren't worried about breaking the competition robot. And I do think that teams that bagged two robots shouldn't be penalized and should be allowed to use one as spare parts for the other. Teams that bagged just spare parts of every component can do the same thing.

As for the "Reasonably astute observer" part of the rules, the trade off of getting rid of that phrase is a lot more rules.