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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
FIRST is an engineering design contest / competition - who can come up with the best engineering solution to the problem that has been presented to solve: a machine that can play a game on the field.
Teams average 120 hours designing and building their machine during the six week build period, about 20 hours in the pits at each regional modifying, testing and maintaining their machine, and about 20 to 30 minutes on the field actually playing the game. That comes out to 9,600 minutes 'off the field' and 30 minutes 'on the field'.
If you collaborate with another team you spend less than 1% of your time 'competing' against that team, 99% of your time collaborating with that team, and 100% of your time competing against all the other FIRST teams.
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if we followed this line of logic, much of the behaviour that is termed 'GP' would no longer be acceptable. no more loaning parts, tools, or skills to needy teams. no more shared machine shops or practice Fields. no more mentoring rookie teams. we'd go from 'co-opertition' to total competition. the truth is, collaboration has been going on for as far as i can remember (i.e. the 6 years i've been involved), just in varying degrees. whether we're giving away spare wheels, chasing bugs in the electrical system, or helping to program an autonomous mode, any time we help another team to become more competitive, are we not 'collaborating' with them?