The cheesecake runaway

[blazingbronco18]

Originally Posted by Josho499#4613

Now that the championships are over, I definitely think that FIRST must implement rules about cheese-caking other robots. For example, The top seed alliance of the Curie Division (1114 Simbotics and 148 Robowranglers) picked two other teams (1923 and 900), and didn't even play with them in playoffs. They faced off with just the two robots while the mech team from 1114 and 148 worked on attaching ridiculously good burglars to 1923. By the time these modifications were finished, it was the finals of Curie Division and they brought out their third team to take the division finals. After this, they set about disassembling the entire drive-base and structure of team 900, to attach four of 1114's ridiculous harpoon guns so that they would be in the weight limit. Now while I have no problem with 1114 and 148 having great mech teams that can build this machinery, I think it is not in the spirit of FIRST to ask other teams to change their whole robot with something they prepared earlier to ensure their own victory. It does not embody gracious professionalism, does not enforce the idea that FIRST is "more than just robots", and does not encourage problem solving skills or strategy, its more like "We are a great team so lets just basicly build two robots that make the perfect alliance and win championships"

You could very well say that playing the 2 v 3 match was also 148 and 1114's biggest flaw. They didn't qualify for the Einstein finals by missing out by 1.66 points in their average score. Which means if they had scored 5 more points in any of those 3 matches, we would have a different champion. If they made the decision to let their 3rd alliance member work on stacking from the human player station there would have been a different result. While I agree that FIRST must find a way to limit cheesecaking, cheesecaking does also present a unique element of strategy.