any system is good as long as the rules are followed - if someone wants to cheat, they will find a way.
according to the current rules, you were allowed to bring spare parts as long as they were fabricated BEFORE the ship deadline (thats why its called a DEADLINE! if you miss it, your team is DEAD!
)
I think the provision to bring spare parts with you, instead of forcing teams to ship them in the crate, was simply to keep shipping costs down - esp since FedEx was SO nice to give teams all that free shipping this year.
Ship the bot, carry your spares with you on the bus
but as stated in the present rules you are not allowed to bring any assemblies: period!
Personally I would like to see the rules stay the way they are - making everyone ship all their spares will only add to the shipping costs for all teams - and if someone wants to cheat and sneak in assemblies that were built after the deadline, we would have to go through an exhaustive inspection process where a judge must be present when you open your crate, and inspect your bot and mark each part, then inspect all the boxes you bring into the arena to make sure you did not sneak any assemblies in.
Do we really want to do this? thats starting to sound like a robot building contest - thats not why we are here (remember?).