The cheesecake runaway

[BigJ]

Originally Posted by George Nishimura

I am struggling to see how game design determines anything but the type of modification. Based on the incredible feat performed by team 900 and co, how long would it take them to build a great d-bot for any of the previous games? Why can't teams give out custom kitbot-ready gearboxes?

With increased availability and ability of COTS parts, it's become a harder problem to outlaw.

I always thought the rules were bound to have loopholes, but it was up to the teams themselves not to try and exploit them.

Unless FIRST tries to explicitly ban it again, there's a culture change, or the role of the third robot becomes trivial, I think "cheesecaking" could be here to stay.

The cost to benefit ratio of any "cheesecake" for a game task that isn't "Do this or lose by default" (read: can race) is probably not good enough.