[Billfred]

I'm writing this from the perspective of a (tor)mentor of two different teams over the ages, both Kitbot users and one-event teams. If your situation is different, your conclusions may well be different.

The teams I've worked with only have one shot at the game--there's no second regional, Championship, or off-season event. Now, you can argue (and I'll agree with you fully) that the season was a success if the kids were inspired and/or learned something, but it still doesn't feel good to go to lunch on Saturday not seeing your team number in the bracket. It didn't feel good as a student, it still doesn't feel good today.

Since we only have this one chance, I'm hesitant to bring onto the field a crucial part of the robot that hasn't been tested or proven--if it doesn't work, there's little chance of fixing it. Other factors tend to limit our own off-season prototyping, so I'm forced to rely on the experiences and thoughts of other folks who have done so. To me, the kit frame has been proven in competition as much as any robot part to date--hundreds, if not thousands, of robots have used it over the past two seasons, and I have yet to see one become so damaged on the field that it couldn't finish a match.

There's also the factor that the frame is, for all intents and purposes, a freebie. Like many one-event teams, the budget is pretty small. I could use this amount of money on parts for a ball pickup mechanism or towards a pair of AndyMark shifters, or I could use it on frame materials. To me, that's a no-brainer--I'll use the kit frame.

Now, there may well be a situation where I wouldn't use the kit frame. I know for a fact that it's rather hard (but not impossible) to do a kiwi drive with the kit frame, plus a few more items. Standard four-wheel omni drive would be rather cumbersome with it, and there are other configurations (6WD with the center wheel driven off the gearbox comes to mind) where the frame is more impractical. But until there's a game where the benefits of rolling our own frame outweigh the costs (both real and opportunity), you'll probably see me advocating the kit frame.