Quote:
Originally Posted by pfreivald
Personally, I would like to see a hard step in the other direction--keep kickoff, and keep stop build day, eliminate the withholding allowance and forbid the use of practice robots--but extend the build season by one, maybe two weeks.
|
Personally I believe that banning the use of practice robots is one of the most ludicrous idea's that I have ever heard proposed as a solution. I get that many teams don't have the resources to build one, and that it gives and "unfair" advantage to the teams that do. But the building and use of practice robots has done more for the develop of level of competition in FIRST than anything else. Second why should we punish the teams who take the time energy and effort to get more resources in order to develop a superior product. If you don't like it, then do something about it on your own team.
I'm in favor of leaving kickoff where it is. Students get a much needed break before the start of build season from school and bringing forward the date of kick off to somewhere in Nov/Dec will only extend the students stress from the end of the first semester, through build season, into the start of the second semester. However, I am in favor of allowing teams to use fabricated parts made before kick off because in reality they would have no idea what the game would be, or what the restrictions on size would need to be. The option would be to just make say a bunch of different launchers and arms and other manipulators and hope that one may work. Doing this comes with an inherent risk/reward that allowing teams to make would be interesting to see.
Where I see the use of fabricated parts being allowed to be used to greatest effect is in drive chassis. Many mid to mid-high teams develop and experiment with new chassis during the off season that they are contemplation using during the build season. Having the ability to use, say for example a custom designed swerve module that you made in house, custom built chassis pieces or even full chassis with electronics boards could be extremely useful as it creates a more realistic performance test bed for scaled prototypes. Allowing teams to further develop their concepts, thus making FIRST more competitive.