COTS: How far should it go?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by MrJohnston

I don't think you are correct here... From their advertisement (follow the link), in bright red letters:

*Kits will be available for purchase, please email support@wcproducts.net for more info*

Didn't RC clarify that by that he meant some of the custom brackets they'd found useful in making it would be available? Which, might actually be useful to teams who have problems making them on their own.

Otherwise I don't see much more than a bunch of VP gussets and tube put together in a clever way.


And as far as I'm concerned - given that, in the years I've been doing this, and the hundreds of teams I interact with every year, I've come to the conclusion that the majority of teams are woefully unprepared for FRC. So either we make the challenge easier (COTS buy a bot) or we move the teams to an easier competition. Since HQ seems violently opposed to the latter I fully support the former.[1] [2]




[1] I'd support the latter more.

[2] Fact: robots that fail to achieve the game objectives consistently do NOT achieve inspiration. Our goal is inspiration. Therefore our goal is to make sure that teams are at least reliably capable of achieving the game challenge.