I'm not quite clear on what "eliminating" Kickoff entails, unless it is supposed to mean moving it earlier in the year.
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Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery
How many high end teams do you see using a drivebase design that's not optimized to the game? I think it's obvious there's a contingent of teams that use kit drivetrains with little (or no) adjustments for the current challenge, and that many of those teams could benefit from having more time to build and test their chassis, drivetrain, and electronics without taking time away from their manipulator efforts.
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I may very well be misunderstanding your point here, but isn't it that, in the current state of things, any team has the same opportunity to experiment with non-kitbot drive trains because they'd all have to start over after Kickoff?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery
Is the "high intensity" an integral portion of the FRC experience? Could removing the "high intensity" build allow for better integration of FRC into students and mentors lives? Could FRC be integrated right into school curriculum if it wasn't a 6-13 week sprint? Would removing the "high intensity" decrease the value to participants? How much more time has to be added to the build season to make it lower intensity? Is adjusting stop build day enough? Would it have to be a year round activity?
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Is it integral? I would say so. If we're going to dub FRC "the sport for the mind", I would hope there is a fair bit of intensity to it. While we do have to caution ourselves against burning out, I believe intensity is part of the challenge, and for some, part of the fun.
Additionally, there likely is a split between low tier teams who don't have enough time to build effective robots for which a longer season would help, and low tier teams who simply do not know how to build effective robots for which no amount of extra time will help them significantly improve.