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Re: Discussion: Release Team Field Drawings Early
I would have to give more thought to this jumping on either side
A good portion of kickoff teams have an advantage over their peers because they have these elements at their disposal. There are a few teams who build the fields but can't store them so they give some or all to other teams so the "all kickoff teams have an advantage" isn't necessarily true. Our team spent most of week 1 making the field with some items extending beyond into weeks 2 or 3 IIRC.
On the flip side we didn't make wooden versions of the static defenses. The team has a contact who got all the metal parts together and our mentors & students welded them in our shop. We only made one of the three sides to a tower and like many teams we didn't bother with the Sallyport or Drawbridge. We never completed our CDF. A hybrid wooden frame, metal door Portcullis was made and only used once for a test IIRC.
So if we had the drawings early I'm not sure what that would do for us since we upgraded to metal versions or skipped making others complete or altogether. Looking back we would have wasted a good portion of our time compared to what we ended up with. Maybe we wouldn't have made metal versions of the field?
All of that being said, the next town to our north is Manchester so the local kickoff for us involves seeing the full competition field. It wouldn't be fair for us to cry, "Disadvantage" over our peers in other areas because we don't have the team elements built and some do.
Opening up the drawings earlier should be discussed. If you choose not to build a full or partial field based on the released materials that is your decision. This is the same type of decision teams make when it comes to how many hours they meet, if they want to use their withholding allowance, or even use some or any of their unbag time. Yes there are teams who don't use withholding or decide not to use their unbag time
I agree with every comment on how bad the field drawings are. It is horrendous.
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