paper: Stop the Stop Build

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

I am not seeing the disconnect that others see. I believe that I can be FOR removing the stop build rules and still be AGAINST having the top teams cheesecake the soul out of a lower tier team.

I have a yardstick. It has inspiration tick marks along its length. I take the controversial position that it is more inspirational to have a team compete with a working robot of their own creation that can accomplish a game objective they set out to achieve.

I don't like excessive cheesecaking because I believe it has bad long term effects on inspiration. I don't like stop build rules because they significantly disadvantage teams with low resources and while wasting resources of high resource teams, both of which adversely affect the inspirational impact of FIRST.

You can disagree with my views but I don't understand how they are incompatible views to have.

What am I missing?

Dr. Joe J.

I think it comes down to a very fundamental difference. You see it as a top tier team taking advantage of a lower tier team. I don't. I see it as two teams collaborating on a set of goals and a common design.

One of the reasons being given, even by myself, is that ending stop build will allow top tier teams to better assist lower tier teams prior to events. What's to stop them from collaborating on alliance strategies or a better design? How is that different than doing it at an event? What if you bring your robot into our shop and we machine parts for you? What if we come up with a plan that is practically unbeatable and have a plan to transform one of our two robots for eliminations?

To me, these ideas are very much related. But hey, as a wise man once said, you don't have to take my word for it.