If you could change one rule - eliminate ship requirement discussion

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Ken Patton

I have always voiced concerns about the "no ship" idea, mainly for the reasons already mentioned: 1)the rich will get richer by making better use of the added time, so the less fortunate teams will not be happy; and 2)the burnout factor will be significantly worse because the intense part of the season just got extended. I still feel that way, and I might regret supporting the "no ship" approach here....but what the heck, here is my attempt to brainstorm on Andy's suggestion by making a few modifications. I'm
brainstorming here - please don't think I am convinced this is a good idea .

I'm with Ken on this one. I'm not a big fan of this idea either. Cory did a really good job encapsulating the "Con" side of the argument. But, I'm going to follow Ken's lead and try add to Andy's idea.

Many of the rules that we have in FIRST are only enforced by an honour code. The 25 lbs. of spare parts, and the restrictions imposed during the fix it windows are good example. Was there anyone making sure that all new code was retyped at the competition venues? Obviously not. We left it up to the teams to honour this rule. What am I getting at? We could impose some restrictions on teams via the honour code, that would make the "No Ship" rule a lot more palatable.

Rule 1: Tools down day occurs on the Wednesday before the 1st weekend of regionals. This means, no more physical additions or changes to your robot past this date. Software development, fabrication of spares, repairs and practice are still allowed.

Rule 2: After each regional you compete at you get three days to repair your robot.

Rule 3: This one is similar to Ken's idea, where a team would declare certain functionalities, to prevent "copycat" robots.

These restrictions would help prevent the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" from growing too much. The tools down rule would definitely lessen the burnout factor, and prevent the build season from running for 3.5 months.

The big question is, would teams adhere to this type of an honour code? Would teams be able to stare at their incomplete robot and not work on it? At every competition, would people be looking at the dominant robots and wonder "Did they really put their tools down?" How much do we all really trust each other. I'm not too sure this is the best idea, but maybe it could work. I'd like to think that I have a good amount of faith in the participants of this program.

Again, I'm just bouncing ideas around, I'm more than fine with keeping things as they are right now.