Mythical Six Week Build Season

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Karthik

This is very common in VRC. By the time we get to VEX Worlds in April, design convergence has usually set in, with 2-3 designs that have been extensively cloned/copied. Some teams really like this, others really don't.

We will see a slight rise in design convergence but not a whole lot more then we already do. Rebuilding an entire FRC robot is a lot of work with or without the bag restraints. Removing the bag restraints isn't going to instantly motivate teams to put in that kind of effort. We see teams rebuild in season every year (we did it, 973 did it, etc).

FRC is a different animal than VRC.

• Less time between first competition and championship
• harder to rebuild/build a robot in that time frame
• more expensive to copy a design
• much, much harder to get it right when you do copy a design
• few teams will just wait for 7 weeks to see what the top week 1 team does

We already saw design convergence with the systems that are easy to modify in many years. It didn't ruin anything.

• 2011 - Minibots
• 2015 - Can Grabbers
• 2012- Bridge Balancing devices (stingers)