[Joe Johnson]

Let me say that I have spoken to no one about this, I am just a disinterested 3rd party on this.

My thought is that they are trying to level the playing field on several fronts.

First, they are trying to allow teams that go to one regional and it happens to be a regional later in the season some of the advantages of teams that go multiple regionals. They get the benefit of seeing how the game is played and some opportunity to do something about it before they compete for the first time.

Second, they are trying to keep us from killing ourselves on the programming front. FIRST programmers have a lousy job. They are the last ones to get access to the robot but the robot doesn't work without them. More and more teams were making the choice to build 2 robots and to develop the code after the ship date on the second robot. FIRST (correctly in my opinion) viewed this situation with dismay. I think the rules are an attempt to try to put some limits on that process.

Are these rules perfect? No I don't thinks so. They are going to unfairly harm some teams and help others. But, I generally agree with the reasons (at least the reasons I have inferred) for them.

Are there improvements we can suggest for next year? Yes, I think so. I am especially encouraged by the fact that we have ended the debate about "if you can enforce it you can't have a rule." The FIX-IT rules are totally on your honor rules. Given that this is acceptable, it opens up other creative methods to the issues (we could for example have a period just before ship date call "Programming & Practice" days where teams cannot improve their robots, only drive and program with some rules about fixing broken parts).

The important thing is that the rules are the rules and we all agree to follow them. We can address next year after the season is over.

Joe J.