Withholding most of your robot? Read this

[ToddF]

Aaaand now we're back here:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...stop+build+day

[JohnSchneider]

Originally Posted by ToddF

Aaaand now we're back here:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...stop+build+day

Didn't mean to derail. Thanks for linking the thread.

[jman4747]

For us the allowance means we can make a practice bot for the first time. That's twice the time learning how to better manage our production process, twice the time for our 75% rookie team to get more practice in the machine shop, twice the time for our %100 rookie programming team to debug, streamline, & try new methods, and any time for our rookie driver to practice. What's so bad about that?

Furthermore it gives us more time to show our sponsors and potential sponsors what we do and what we are capable of. On a larger scale it can mean more teams becoming more competitive this year, which means more exciting matches and that much better of a spectator sport.

[Steven Smith]

Originally Posted by animenerdjohn

I think you misinterpret my tone and purpose. Capping money, or limitations on it isn't the problem at all. Wasting it is. If everyone is going to build two why make teams waste that money. Let them use that couple of thousand on attending another regional. One of the biggest reasons for the district model is to allow teams multiple events. Students would learn more from attending two regionals and iterating their design between them, than refabricating a second bot.

Sorry about that, I think I did misunderstand your intent as "this isn't fair" versus "what is the point". I can see the argument for allowing build to continue through the regionals. If your only regional is a later regional, it is likely the better teams have already attended more events to iterate their design, and you are at a disadvantage because of less time to hone the design. I don't see how it would detract from the intent of FIRST to allow even more time to hone the design. I also don't think it would be terribly unbalancing to allow free build through week 6 of events.

However, I do think 6 weeks is already a good balance between enough time to create a very capable robot, and avoiding catastrophic impact to work/personal life. Six weeks of working the bare minimum at work and very little family time (~10% of the year) is already a strain, though one my boss and wife understand. If I tried to do that for 3 months a year, it might reach a breaking point. For that reason, I support the stop build, and I look forward to sleeping tomorrow night