Withholding most of your robot? Read this

[Orion.DeYoe]

Originally Posted by animenerdjohn

I meant that to the effect of: We had to ship our robots and therefore needed a uniform date. The robot then left our possession and so it wouldn't be possible to keep working on it. Now that the robot stays in our possession for weeks, there's no reason we shouldn't be allowed to work on it.

I mean we're working on its twin for the weeks up to regional. All FIRST is doing is making us spend twice as much money to stay competitive.

You are making the same mistake that most non-practice-robot people make. Building a second robot is not easy (my team builds one)! Not only do we have to fabricate, assemble, and wire double the number of parts, we also can't use quick fixes to problems. The reason for this is that just slapping a piece of tape or something on a problematic mechanism isn't repeatable, your practice robot won't function the same as your competition robot if you're not really careful. It forces you to build better robots from the start.
My team has the time, knowledge, budget, build space, and manpower to build two robots and we use every last drop of our resources to make it happen. By the end of the build season we have earned that second robot. A practice robot is not an unfair advantage as many seem to think.