[Matt Leese]

While there are many teams there are a few teams that can build anything they want to out of raw materials, they are in the minority and will almost always be so. However, that doesn't remove the fact that it's a legitimate point that they can build any part that they would want to buy. That said, I don't think that the small number of teams that this refers to should be what the decisions are based around.

In fact, it may not be possible for a team to always build all the components that they want. I remember specifics instances in 1998 and 1999 where we built our base out of steel, not because of strength issues, but merely because of cost issues (this was when the cost limit was around $500). When that becomes the case, the cost issues can become quite a limiting factor. (I realize that for a single gear this isn't a large issue but it does add up over time).

As for robots not looking good enough for television, as long as I've been involved with FIRST, there have always been good looking robots (and that includes times when the price limit was much lower). In my opinion, the winning robots have begun to look worse rather than better the past few years (but this is just my personal opinion). In fact, by including more ways to score in the game, it makes it less likely that FIRST will ever get television coverage (which may or may not be a good thing).

While I normally don't like to include more rules and I'm not even sure if this would ever be a good idea, but perhaps FIRST needs to look into a way of recording the costs of machining time? If FIRST is supposed to approximate real-world engineering in any way, this would seem to be an important part of the program. That said, I don't think any simple system would work nor am I proposing any. It's simply a thought.

Matt