The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

[Doug G]

Originally Posted by Hjelstrom

I vote to keep the 6 week deadline. I would even vote to eliminate the withholding allowance. The arms race will get worse as teams start copying the good designs they see in earlier competitions (take a look at VEX). It will turn into a never-ending brutal build season if you want to try to compete with the best.
(just my opinion)

Thank you mentioning VEX... with a longer build season, the amount of improvement leads to a bunch of similar scoring robots, which may be good for the average match score, but I find it a bit uninspiring. At Vex Worlds, a lot of the top bots had a very similar scoring mechanism that I'm sure were inspired by others. The minibot from 2011 is another example. I really enjoy seeing a lot of variety robots and solutions to the game challenge. This year was probably the most variety in robots. If teams were allowed to continue to improve their design, I have a feeling we see a lot more floor intakes, Full Court Shooters, and all would be using the same type of wheels... Boring...