[EricH]

Jesse, even those of us who do neither FTC nor VEX and who are sitting out the FRC competition are complaining. It's turning a mousetrap car (with the option for FTC) into an FTC robot. That could be good, or it could be bad, but either way it's changing the rules in a major way.

There were a number of ways to eliminate unsafe launching and declare a minimum weight equivalent to the FTC battery. Minibots must contact the tower during the entire deployment, minibots must have a minimum weight of X, the list goes on. Instead of one that allows for stored-energy designs, they went with the most restrictive rule they could. After teams had already started their FIRST Choice ordering.