Practice bot morality

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by 2544HCRC

I've also been involved in car racing. I take a slightly different view. What happens in most racing series is that a few teams start to dominate the field because of resources. Pretty soon all of the other teams start to think "what's the use?" and quit showing up and pouring money down an unfillable hole. If the rules aren't adjusted the field dwindles and dies. I see that in FIRST. Rookie teams are sold one thing and show up to another. My guess is that if the presentation for FIRST went something like you are going to need a team of Engineering mentors, access to a pretty sophisticated shop, and the finances to build 2 robots + in order to be competitive, the field would and will be much much smaller. FIRST has a bad reputation already in most school circles as being expensive and difficult to be competitive, at least that has been my experience when talking with principals and school board members. We did BEST this year as a trial and will probably switch over to FTC and BEST next year.

And how is this any different than competing at the top tier in high school athletics? They have trained staff (equivalent to engineers except the school PAYS them), they have facilities (shops that the school, again, paid for), and they have entire fields built for them that, AGAIN, the school paid for.