[Stuart]

you know I really dont see why they are so . . glah about this. . . well on the programing front any way. if youve shipped your bot youve shipped your control board and any code you do generate is untested and therefore worthless.

but I do see the reason for the 10 hour thing when it comes to mechanical parts(teams in the latter regionals could completely redesign their robots in 4 weeks).

ohh well the rules cant be perfect, and its the only real way to deal with the fact of staggered regionals with out staggered kickoffs.

an on the subject of spectator friendliness, the real trick to this is game design . . . having a robot play basketball is very spectator friendly(better than picking out cans by a human controlled see saw). while yes many of the teams will not be as good as others there will always be enough to make a spectator who knows nothing about robotics go "OMG thats cool what those high schoolers can do."