[MARS_James]

So while this is getting heated I think there is a few things we can all agree on:

1. International teams are at an inherent disadvantage to teams based in the United States

2. This is a good thing for anyone who can take advantage of it.

3. It being implemented for teams in the US would not be a bad thing but it is also not as necessary as for international teams.


So my 2 cents on this is two fold:

1. I think that being a team in the United States that 1/5th of my credits is a little steep for one extra game piece since it isn't that bad for me to get more. I think it would have been more fair for them to price out how much they would charge them if they were just a regular FIRST Choice item and teams just buy them that way, it's not like teams can grab much from how many credits they are. As a team who hosts a kick off it seems pretty simple for how FIRST can do this, either have a different colored tote for teams who wanted an extra game piece, or just mark it by having different colored zip ties.

2. The idea of shipping a lot of game pieces to the international regional directors and allowing them to become the shipper for the game piece seems fair and simple:
- FIRST ships a large amount (lets call it 3 per team) of game pieces very early to the regional directors (Who sign NDAs and whatever else FIRST wants) with hopefully a prepaid return label
- Teams post kick off can log on to Andy Mark (or whoever distributes the game piece) and purchase as if they are a US team (Limited by how many game pieces available).
- When it comes time to select shipping have a drop down box that lists international locations to ship from
- Teams select their location and get charged for the game piece and it is not refundable
- The regional director then gets an email and it will either contain the contact of who is coming to get the extra game pieces, or the shipping location to send said pieces

This should not be that challenging it is like either in store pickup or ship from store which is fairly common in retail these days. You keep the game pieces limited to say week 4 then it is free game for whoever wants however many they want. When stop build day comes around the RD can then choose to keep the extra game pieces (and pay for them) for their events, or return them to FIRST.

I really feel like either of these options above is not to challenging to implement nor that unfair.