What would you do if build were longer?

[,4lex S.]

I think we would finish the robot on time. Mabye...

[PlatyPi Gunner]

If it they just told us it was X days longer, we'd probably go slower or do the exact same thing. If, two days before shipping, they announced it was extended another 6 weeks I think we'd jump around crying out of happiness of actually having time to test and improve(and paint more things purple)

[Bertman]

I don't believe it would matter. The teams that are done on time would still be done. The teams that flounder would still flounder. The kids keeping up with school work would still keep up. The others............you get the point.
The lunacy would expand to fill the available time and mentors would burn out.
Just my $.02.

[BPetry234]

I know the build season is only 6 weeks long but you can "stretch" it a little.

Summer and fall projects are great. You can design chassis, code, electrical layouts, manufacturing processes, etc. that might be applicable to next years game. Of course you would just be guessing, but if you have an arsenal of ideas that you have already tested it can speed up the process. (On a side note make sure you DON'T use it on your competition robot. If you are designing a chassis make it 1"X1" to big based off of the previous years game so you aren't tempted and no one can charge you for it.) Once again, these would just be prototypes, weapons in your brainstorming arsenal if you will. They are also great ways to keep your team involved in the off season.

With the 40 lbs weight that each team could bring into each competition, you could continue to improve your robot. That doesn't mean that a robot will change drastically, but we all saw shooters become dumpers this year to great effect.

Six weeks is a great time length. As others have said, it forces your team to push the envelope of design. It would be nice to sleep a little though...

[Jon Jack]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

The project will always expand to fill up whatever time is available, I don't think making it longer would help anyone.

I've experienced other competitions with longer seasons, and see teams show up equally unprepared at events.

Bingo...

Think of FTC? How many teams show up to their first FTC event unprepared? Most of them have a 3 or 4 month build season and they show up to their first competition still adding mechanisms, tweaking code, etc, etc... Give people more time and they'll procrastinate even more than they do now.

[Katie_UPS]

Let me get this straight;

I LIKE BUILD SEASON AS IT IS.

If it were longer, I'd go insane. I was just wondering what people would do.
This is kinda my way of seeing what people value most during build. Some people prefer to spend more time building, while others think its all in prototyping. And in another world, kids would put their emphasis on code.

So this isn't a petition for longer build, guys and gals.