[austind27]

After reading through this post I understand everyone’s arguments. The thing I find most surprising is everyone is saying that at the end of the six week period everyone returns back to their normal lives. In every year that I have done FIRST I can't ever remember a year that life went back to normal once we shipped the robot. In all four years that I was involved in FIRST we built a practice robot. The thing with a practice robot is, you want it done before your first competition so your programmers can program your autonomous modes, and your drivers can get some practice in before you get to the competition. This means that you have about a week to build/finish an identical robot to the one you just shipped away in the crate. That means there are a lot more long hours put in after the ship date. The solution to this problem, eliminate the ship date, so the need for a practice robot would also be eliminated. I can say that in my 4 years of FIRST and 2 years with the Oakland County Competitive Robotics Association (OCCRA), the system that OCCRA uses is a lot better than the system FIRST uses. OCCRA uses a system where your first competition is your build deadline. You show up that day with your completed robot and compete. Once done competing you take you robot back home and you can continue to work on it/improve it up until the final competition of the year. I understand I'm kind of comparing apples to oranges here, but if FIRST could eliminate the ship date and say show up Thursday at your first competition with a robot that is ready to compete, I feel it would be better. Then when you’re done competing, you could take your robot back home to fix it and make whatever modifications your team sees fit to be more competitive. I feel this is a lot better than shipping your beat up robot off to the next competition and showing up with spare parts and zip ties to fix your robot. This would mean that come the championship event robots would be at the peak of their game which would make for a lot better and more exciting competition.