Cheesecake: How far is too far?

[Chris Hibner]

I'm donning my fire proof suit as I write this...

As I mentioned on FRC GameSense last week, I'm not a big fan of "Cheesecaking". I actually have what I think is a better word for it, but that's beside the point.

If it's a small upgrade, or "this mechanism would work better if you made this improvement", then I think that's great as long as the team gets to keep the improvement. When it becomes adding entire pre-planned mechanisms or completely rebuilding large portions of a robot, I'm not a fan.

There are many reasons that I feel the way I do, but I don't want this post to become a novel.

For now I'll only give one reason: There are good teams with good robots that get left out of eliminations as a result. I have been to more than one event in which I saw teams that were definitely in the top 24 robots at the competition sit on the sidelines during eliminations because it was easier to throw a bolt-on mechanism on a box-on wheels.

I've long had the opinion that the best robots should advance and win (yes - I rooted heavily for 469 in 2010) so the efforts of those teams can be rewarded. When a team that should be rewarded sits on the sidelines while a lesser team is rewarded, I have a feeling that the team that is sitting out has a problem with that - and I do too.