[IKE]

Jim,
It is really neat to see these thoughts put into a cohesive piece. I know you have been working on and off on this for at least since 2010 talking about ideas and discussing possible formats.

I am a big advocate of the "transition" method. One piece missing from Jim's paper is the propensity of procrastination from some teams. If you have a stop build day, it sets a deadline and the procrastinators will miss that. If you get rid of stop build, the procrastinators will just procrastinate until the event, which can be incredibly detrimental to the week of their first competition.
The "transition" model of a stop build, but weekly test/train/tune/repair sessions give teams some development experience without completing loosing a lot of the intended meaning from the stop build.

As long as there is a stop build day and some limit to access, teams with the drive and resources will continue to build a second robot. Even with no more bag day, many of the highest performers will still build two robots so that one can be used for programming team, and one for training/testing.

My only ask out of this would be that every team get that every week. Please do not give 6 hours for competition unbag week vs. 8 hours for "other" weeks as that would get very confusing.

8 hours each week will be very beneficial though will be a bit of B&T nightmare. If FRC keeps the 2 hour blocks, that would be 4 sessions per week by 6 regional weeks or an additional 24 potential sessions not including displays. We may want to re-think the tag portion of the B&T.