Cheesecake: How far is too far?

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

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.

Honestly, if my team had one of the top 24 robots at a regional or district event and a purely cheesecaked team made it into playoffs over us. I would be pretty annoyed. But I wouldn't be annoyed at the cheesecake giver or the cheesecake recipient, I would be annoyed with myself and my team.

This event would clearly show me that my team either needs to work harder, or analyze the game better. If another team can build a bolt-on mechanism with their withholding allowance that is better than my mechanism that does the same task, I don't believe that my team is working hard enough to deserve a spot in playoffs. If there are no alliances that have any use for our mechanism, that means we mis-analyzed the game, and that we shouldn't be in playoffs anyway because we would not be able to be the most valuable contributor.

If every team would build within their means and analyze the game well, then I bet most of the "issues" surrounding cheesecake would vanish.