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I know this has been debated before but here is my two cents.
FIRST is a great thing, we can all see that right here. It's why we come back every year, why we raise the money to enter and why we spend six weeks living off fast food in the oddest places with power tools. Most of all it is why we care enough about the game to argue this hard and long over what would look to an outsider like such a small thing. It is perhaps the best robot game out there today. That doesn't make it perfect, much as we all may wish it would. No one can see every loophole that might come up, not in FIRST not in law not anywhere. So the question is officially left unaddressed, just like it was in the beginning of when the game started.
Maybe it was suppose to be run this way. Maybe it was some puzzle for some bright student or mentor to come up with. However if it was I don't understand why the stacks were ever used at all in that case because if both sides are multiplied in every match then the advantage disappears to having stacks at all. Is the human player stacking suppose to be considered a skill that decides the match? I very much doubt it, FIRST is meant to be gracious professionalism demonstrated in a robotics competition. Athletics already recognize fairly thoroughly the talents of coordination speed and accuracy.
As for the stacks being left discourages bulldozers? I also don't agree to that. I'm sure most of you will agree it is much easier to destroy, or even guard, than it is to create. A working stacking robot is very difficult to make, we've seen that in the regionals already from the number of stacking robots that came compared to the number of stacking robots that worked. A stack of three was more than most teams could handle, but when stacks of eight are already set out on the field and left there who needs stacking robots at all? I have not heard of a robot that could make a stack of more than eight so stacking robots have literally no point with the stacks they would have made already there. I think it unfair to those teams who went the extra mile to try to do something a little harder and accomplished it, it takes them out of the running with their positions filled by humans. What does that leave? The bulldozers so many people want to avoid. The pushing shoving box herding robots that ram each other off the bridge and plow across the field shoving boxes back and forth are what are left to be competitive. They're great robots and it takes a good drive train to make one but honestly as for making the game exciting, the loudest cheers I heard whether over a webcast or right there in the stands or on the sidelines was when a robot successfully stacked even one box on another.
It is legal. You may get away with it in some places. Nothing in the rules will stop you, but does it make the game more interesting, more complex or adds another layer? No, I think in reality it takes layers off. It was smart for the team, no doubt about it but at the cost the game. Maybe whoever thought of it hadn't considered that possibility at the time they thought of it and neither did the people who decided to use it in the regionals. No matter how it was done though yelling at each other for what was done will not change anything. FIRST will not be reawarding the regional winner's titles. What's done is done. We can't change it and pointing fingers, no matter how many, will not help. We see it does not help the game. Just learn from it. Isn't that what engineering is really about anyway?
Best of luck everybody tomorrow at the championships.
Katy
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