[Raul]

Joe,

You are right that the rules are not stated perfectly clearly. However, my interpretation would be that it would be ridiculous to make each regional into a spare parts "black hole". How can we expect people to bring another robot worth of spares to the regional and then have to ship them all from there?

If FIRST comes out with a clear ruling stating that I am wrong, then we will comply. Otherwise, I am sticking with my interpretation until officially told otherwise.

BTW, read the FIRST message board again carefully about whether or not you have to wait until the 2nd regional to bring your spare robot parts. It does not say anything about waiting for the 2nd competition and in fact implies that you could use them in the 1st regional as long as they were built within the 6 week build period. I think it was message #767 and there was another one (#77x) that followed.

FIRST really needs help writing rules.
I just wish they would hire someone who knows how to right the rules clearly in the manuals and updates and use examples to illustrate them. I am an avid golfer and believe me, golf has more rules than any other sport. And many amateur golfers like to loosely interpret the rules; so books have been created that clearly illustrate each rule with examples. That's what we need in the future so we don't have to act like lawyers.

And why did they have to choose the word "partnered" to describe what teams can be chosen during the team selection process? Couldn't they have simply said whether or not a seeded team could pick another seeded team??

I'm done ranting.