[pwnageNick]

I suppose coming up with a new defense to replace the Portcullis makes sense if FIRST will not be sending it with the field. Personally I think just always having the CDF out would be fine, but I could convince myself that having a new one would be good.

I do not however understand any logic behind trying to replace the Sallyport, Drawbridge, or any other defense.

For one this devalues any robots who actually designed around these challenges. It also removes a challenge that teams may feel like adding something small to their robot to in the offseason to try.

If you want to add a new defense, I'm not sure in what way that new defense would be effective. There would be two ways to approach it: either something that almost all robots would be able to accomplish with their current designs, or something challenging that teams would have to engineer their robots further to accomplish. Either option is poor; if you make something that almost everyone can accomplish with their current robot, then why even bother creating it or replacing any of the current defenses in the first place. If you make a challenging one, you are forcing teams to build something new to damage it, which most offseason events tend to want to avoid. Also, if you're replacing the drawbridge or sallyport, those are already 2 defenses that most teams were never able to do this season, so replacing them with something challenging that requires a new mechanism is pointless when the team could deisgn a new mechanism for those defenses they chose not to do during the regular season.

Sorry this post got away from me a bit and I rambled, I'm still recovering from my VEX/FIRST Champs illness. Bottom line, I'd say just leave the defenses alone (physically). Now if you wanted to change the breach requirement to needing to damage all 5, then I might be interested...