A Recycle Rush Reflection

[asid61]

Originally Posted by iRobot_

I agree this game is exciting to watch in eliminations, but I think the worst aspect of this game is this whole tether nonsense. Teams who struggled in their first event were able to add a ramp with some string, and all the sudden the robot can now put up stacks consistently. While I am happy the robot can now succeed at what it was meant to do, I think it moves away from one of the core aspects on FIRST, ingenuity. Teams can spend about 4 minutes designing a ramp instead of trying to fix the robot they originally built. FIRST should have mandated at least a motorized component on any part of a robot attached by a tether to help combat the abuse of the rule.

I like that rule though. Adding a ramp is such a nice change; it's better for all the robots to be a bit better by deciding a ramp was a good idea and sticking it on. As long as they made it, it's all pretty well defined.
Giving those ramps to other teams though I don't really like so much. Picking robots for the sole purpose of sticking 30lbs of withholding allowance on them seems to defeat the purpose of putting a lot of effort into a robot at all. It will likely have less of an impact at championships due to higher caliber robots, but it was pretty prevalent in earlier weeks, and even now.

EDIT: SVR was really obvious after Thursday. 254 would win, and whomever they picked would win as well. It's usually somewhat obvious, but this year was especially bad.