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Originally Posted by BillCloyes
Considering the disparity amoung teams and their resources, how could an inspector determine what is "realistic" for each team. Some teams have 100 people involved, some less than 10; some teams have more/better funding and could afford to "buy" 3 days of machine shop time in 7 different shops. I think that forcing the inspectors to try to determine what teams are capable of designing/building in 3 days is going to do nothing but create problems... not just problems, but big, ugly inconsistancies. (This is generally a bad thing for soo many reasons that I hope that I need not go into it...)
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If a team shows up at competition with an entire robot, which they supposedly built in three days, I think eye-brows will be raised. Assuming that FIRST maintains the $3500 limit and requires included costs of fabrication, the bill of materials for this "spare" + the costs of the original robot would have to fit into such a limit.
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Originally Posted by BillCloyes
So teams that have and attend a local competition (little or no travel time) have an advantage? What about those teams (the #s seems to increase every year) that compete in back to back competitions, competitions that are nowhere near each other? do they just lose out?
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Per my original proposal (which probably won't be adopted by FIRST anyway, so don't worry), you would only be able to fabricate for three days prior to ONE regional. If you go to multiple competitions, you potentially lose out as your robot accumulates damage that cannot be repaired. This would at least make it a trade-off on whether to go to multiple competitions. Right now, if you can afford it, there is no down-side to attending multiple regionals. It's all good.
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Originally Posted by BillCloyes
Not quite...A completely level playing field will never happen.
-Bill
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What I meant by "level playing field" is that all teams would be following the same set of rules. In the past several years, teams have had the lee-way to interpret the rules to their advantage and to find gray areas in the rules that allow them to justify their activity.