I agree that the placebo shouldn’t be a 125 lb. paper weight (even thouth that’s what they were when we were paired with them 
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I know that this is not FIRST, but I have heard Dean Kamen speak of his desire to have the robots in FIRST try to achieve more than the other team, not score one point and then keep the other team from scoring. Anyway I’m trying to get to my point. When I heard of the placebo, I originally thought it would be like prior FIRST placebo robots in that they just ran around and really din’t do anything. Later on I found out it’s purpose was to help its partner. I thought its presence would help increase the score of the team it was on. It can move the cart closer to the human players, push balls to the human player, block other teams from harrasing its partner and maybe even score a couple of balls. What I did not expect was that it would ever try to lower the score of their opponents. While playing defense is a viable tactic for a functioning team’s robot, I do not believe it is the sort of thing the placebo should be doing. The placebo playing defense seems even more strange when you consider that the placebo is in all likelihood much better at doing this than the robot it replaced (had it been functioning perfectly). A team should never WANT the placebo as a partner.
I guess with this thread I am lobbying for a kinder, gentler placebo for future matches. It is my opinion that the placebo should ONLY try to increase its teams match score. This is certainly better than not having a partner and is not likely to exceed the capabilities of the team who couldn’t make it to the match.
Just my thoughts…