[BrendanB]

I'm not 100% sure how it would impact our team however what we have seen (for both my current team and prior teams) is that in order to keep up with the field second bots are a norm and if you don't have one you have to work really, really hard to pull it off. Teams like 359 have made it work with one machine however they are far from your average FRC program, but that's mainly in part due to the huge efforts they have put in to grow their FRC/VEX programs.

This year 1058 built two complete machines but in doing so our strategy/design discussions usually centered around us aiming simpler because we had to do it twice. It was really tight on a budget for two machines and the only way it worked for us was we made design decisions based around what COTS items we could reuse along with making one electronics board we swapped between them as part of our withholding allowance. The process worked well as we saw an increase in on field performance and our level of prepardness going into our events. I saw the same things on 1519 when we moved to a second machine in 2009, capitalized on it in 2010, and they continue to do so today. Same goes for 3467 we built a second chassis in 2013 and since then they've made a complete second robot.

Its really hard but its becoming the norm.

For me at least stop build day really just means we meet a little less but that's mainly because the prior two weeks were spent working our tails off because there was a deadline around the corner. We took a little time to recover but found ourselves spending even later nights before our Week 2 event and similarly Week 4 & 5. The reality is teams end up killing themselves twice now: once before stop build day and the other before their first event.

I would see it as a huge pressure relief for our team if we removed the deadline because the reality is for us with building two machines plus out of bag time before our qualifying events we are investing time and money into machines on a level that doesn't compare to my time as a student in 2008 when we finished the robot(s)*, put it in a crate, and didn't see it until our only regional that year a week later. That was also back in the day when there was no 30lbs of prefabricated materials you could bring to an event to upgrade your robot only functionally identical parts. If you wanted to rebuild your robot you had to do it exclusively at the event on a Thursday as simply as possible.

FRC has changed dramatically since then. We play more, iterate more, modify more, and meet more. The idea of a "6 week build season" no longer exists for most of the teams in FRC who compete non-stop especially with some of the top tier now building two complete practice robots or one with a prototype for software or "other" mechanism development. The short window between development of ideas, design, and the time to build a machine impacts some companies who can provide parts for teams. Giving a potential sponsor a one or two week window for parts doesn't always end with a "yes".

I do believe no stop build day would open many doors for some schools to bring FRC into the classroom allowing more teachers to start teams if they can meet during school and a little after school for a longer period of time before there first event.

*In 2008 we built two machines but they weren't the same for a specific reason.