The cheesecake runaway

[Steven Smith]

Originally Posted by NPeshimam

Cheesecaking this year felt a lot like the modifications made to autonomous routines in 2014, such as reading hand gestures from a computer camera. It was not explicitly illegal, and allowed teams to take advantage of a lack of specificity in the rules to improve robot function. This year FIRST recognized the ingenuity behind those modifications, but banned them so that autonomous routines that had no human interaction would be implemented. If they really feel that cheesecaking is taking away from the spirit of the competition it will be addressed in the rules next year. Until then it seems wrong to call out teams that take full advantage of the rules and resources at their disposal to do everything in their power to win.

I think the majority opinion is not to criticize any particular person/team/etc for either cheese-caking, being cheese-caked, etc... but a concern about the next "arms race" where a team with sufficient resources could potentially bring their own alliance to a tournament by building complimentary mechanisms/robots and handing them to 1st/2nd picks.

If the rules allow it, teams would (and should) pursue it. Now in 12-14 weeks, you are working even harder... not just to make your own robot, but to design cheesecakes around stripped down robots.

A rule (or game design) that lessened the strategic benefit of cheese-caking, while leaving the option to help other teams out would likely be well received. One idea I floated on the post a while back regarding the Q/A banning all help, was to potentially allow unlimited cheese-caking through X time (Friday quals at a regional?), and only limited (2-5lbs?) changes after alliance selection. If a well meaning team wants to help another team overhaul their robot, they could and should... but it shouldn't provide an overwhelming strategic advantage to the giver. It should be able to be scouted, or perhaps posted at the inspection station... so the gift has made the team inherently more valuable to other alliances. To me, there is a distinct difference between cheesecaking a team to help them, and cheesecaking a team to help myself.