[artdutra04]

I really like the idea of say, any combination of CIM, FP, Globe, and Van Door motors (or any other 12V VDC motor that costs less than say, $30 or $50), as long as the total is less than 10 motors. The only other restriction I'd maybe put is a maximum total Wattage of motors used to power the drive train. Some teams would forget or ignore whether their drive trains were torque or traction limited, and would assume that more motors is always more traction, and you'd see 10-CIM drive trains (like how we saw 4-CIM drive trains this year). This would be fine on a concrete floor, but on carpet the amount of available power there would destroy the carpet in a pushing match in seconds. (Although this scenario could be covered under a "Don't Damage the Field" rule, as if a team had a 10-CIM drive train but also had traction-control code to prevent the drivetrain wheels from slipping and thus potentially damaging the floor, they wouldn't ever actually damage the floor).

It's kind of like the idea that weight limits are unnecessary for Vex robots. If you want to build a 50-pound Vex robot, you'll pay for it in speed and battery life. You want to build an eight degree of freedom arm all powered by CIM motors? Enjoy your thirty second battery life.

As we finally saw this past season, FIRST decided to treat teams to a little more responsibility by eliminating the "No Tape Rule". Now, we could finally use duct tape if we wanted to. And you know what? The quality of the robots ended up just fine, and having the ability to use duct tape for emergency repairs was a great asset this year for many teams.

But at the same time, we still need some rules and restrictions. If we eliminated all restrictions and basically said "use up to $3000 to build anything you want to play this game", we'd end up with a lot of teams getting the Deer-in-headlights syndrome, staring at a blank sheet of paper with no idea on where to begin. Restrictions, just like engineering task specifications in the real world, help narrow down the problem effectively enough to make it easier to solve.