Creating and selling parts.

[Billfred]

Alright, for the fairness thing, lemme take it back to a sort of competition I was deep into long before I even heard of FIRST: The Pokémon TCG.

Back in the days of Base, Jungle, all those rather wimpy expansions, and Genesis, there were generally a few decks that kept showing up. Haymakers, Chansey-Alakazam stall decks...and the occasional Mulligan Mewtwo. And while these would keep slugging it out, you'd have the odd kid now and then who would come out with an odd experiment of a deck that nobody had tried. And he'd mop the floor with all of them.

Or consider a cold virus. Everyone's expecting another form of it, but it's that one form that shows up that screws everyone up.

The point? As time goes by, many teams are going to stick to the more proven parts of FIRST. I fully expect to see quite a few teams next year using 33-style transmissions, in whole or in half. I'll bet money that I'll see lots of teams bundling up their LEDs into one little box, 1293 style. Shoot, I'll even bet that a damaged field element will wind up on the head of anyone who can get their mitts on one, Billfred-in-Atlanta style.

However, it's those little tweaks, those little spins that people put on their robots that make them stand out, that will always win the day in FIRST. I've seen my fair share of ball-suckers, grab-as-they-droppers, floor hangers (cough)spam(cough)...while they share common things, they all have their own little tweak that made them more or less effective. Eventually, the "less effective" tweaks will settle to the bottom, and the more effective ones will be assimilated by the group. Then someone will tweak the tweak. That's when the fun begins.