Ethics of 2 teams building 2 identical robots

[Bongle]

First, my answer: I have no problem with collaboration (ethical or otherwise). Personally though, I'd build 1 robot and a practice robot if I had the resources to build and enter 2 teams. You can use the leftover entry fees for either another regional for the single bot, or for tools/computers/travel.

Another thing to keep in mind is that a large fraction of the responses you'll get on CD (especially this time of year) are mentors, people from successful teams, and people who have seen and accepted many different ways to organize teams. I bet if you compared the success rate of the teams of the responders here to the set of FRC teams at large, you'd find a large difference. Similarly, there is probably a big difference between the opinions here and in the FRC community at large - For my first couple years in FRC, I was not a fan of teams with heavy mentor involvement, teams with lots of money, teams that collaborated, etc. I've gradually come around on most of those topics (as happens when you become a mentor and still need to justify your continued involvement), but there'll be no small fraction of participants at your regionals who will hold opinions very different from the majority of this thread.