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I think that Dodgeball style is out of the question. To hazordous. FIRST has never been about smashing something people have spent a lot of work on. On the hazordous part, the field would have to be made to have no holes the size of the ball so as to prevent injury from the balls. (There is currently not because any launching of balls has not been a fast, horizontal launch that could injure. The launcher that shot about 30 ft at Kickoff last year had a high arch thus being slower and more noticeable by the crowd.)
Last year's inspection I assume had checked for fast, powerful, horizontal launching mechanisms for safety reasons.
Besides that, if you got an intentionally busted peice of your machine, you'd be angry. Something that you worked your butt off on getting creamed because some driver is ticking sucks. (It happened to 247 last year)
- I know which team did it, but I won't say.. At Great Lakes Regional, they was attempting to push our telescoping tether out of scoring position, after they did they rammed full speed bending it to become unfixable material. Luckily, our engineers had made replacement pieces for it and brought it with them to the pits. About 5 or 6 of us had to disassemble and rebuild the arm before our next competition (which was in roughly an hour). We got it done and were exhausted because it was a 2 hour process crammed into about 45 minutes. For the rest of that competition, and later in the Canadian Regional we hated the team that did it to us, because it was an obviously malicious act.
-- back to subject --
If FIRST were to become a malicious-based competition I think a lot of kids would not get the benefits they do now. Sure, hands-on engineering skills, but not that good ol "Co-opertition" that hides it's real value.
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