I’m curious what the general vibe the community has with teams that make 2 of the same robots and enter them into competition under 2 different team names. I think there is a discussion to be had on how this effects the program as a whole. I personally think its strange and unhealthy for the community as a whole as it makes FIRST more pay to win as it gives you 2 times the chance to pick or be picked on a winning alliance.
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I really wonder who this would be about.
This thread may be helpful: Teams 1923 & 1914 The MidKnight Inventors 2022 Robots - Outrage and Uproar - #13 by TEAMNEERD
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I gotta remember to bring up the Triplets thread from 2006, or the Bionic Poofs thread from 2004, when I get home.
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(Link to the 254/60 collab seems to be broken.)
I am all for multiple teams with the same robot. If that was one team, odds are good that each student would be getting less hands-on time with the robot and its parts.
I’d also like to posit that this topic only comes up if the robots are good. If two random teams built identical mediocre robots that ranked 27th and 34th at their regional and were somewhere in the last few picks for elims, would anyone care?
What about the everybot? There’s a heck of a lot of teams with the exact same very potent robot. Why is that any different?
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We had a twin team at our regional and they were a blast! Even if you pay for 2 spots you still have build 2 good robots (equally the same with awards). To me it really fun to see. I don’t view it too dissimilar to our good friend’s team. They have carte blanche to walk into our shop and use what they need: mi casa su casa.
Now there are some scummy things that these teams can do with strategy and having leverage against a 3rd team on an alliance. However, I have never seen this behavior before and hope to never see it.
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Here you go: Robot Collaboration
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Nah I got that one to work. The link in that thread (this one) is broken.
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If I ever had a program so big that we could support two FRC teams, I’d much rather they build two different robots and explore how the different solutions compare. Make them well enough and you don’t need to worry about which group gets the “better idea” since they’re both great. Also more kids get to design robots!
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My best day of FRC ever might be the day I met this team. We built the same robot, because it’s an Open Alliance build. What an honor to be able to play together at the Orange County Regional.
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I agree with you in terms of student to student engagement.
I hadent thought in terms of everybot, students that lack the skill to fully develop and test their ideas still get a chance to engage with FIRST and gain that experience.
I was hyper focused on the FIT Austin event where 2468 has 3 teams 2687 and 2689 all three made elims and 2 of the 3 made finals.
Thank you all for talking and discussing my feelings towards this have shifted and I can now see the merit in having multiple teams especially if its a school w 50+ kids interested in the robotics program.
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The person using the tool often has more influence on the result than the tool. There are many classes of autosport where the cars are forced by the rules to have nearly identical performance, on paper, and success is due to preparation, driver skill and a bit of luck.
How big of a problem is this anyways?
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I think the question isn’t about two teams building the same robot, but one team building one robot twice and then competing with both. Honestly, I have such a little perspective into why teams might do that and it is so rare as to not really be too bothersome to me.
Maybe dozens. I don’t know the extent of teams. I can maybe name 3-4.
I know a few more that formed a second team in their school and build different robots, even if sharing resources, going to the same competitions, etc. But that isn’t that many either, but it might be more popular when the number of students gets higher.
My main concern over competition is that their is opportunity for as many students to be engaged in the design process, including a stake in it being something that they came up with and built. And it is less clear that a joint project allows for those opportunities when the teams are already the same.
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Its not a problem just something i noticed qatching the austin event and wanted to know how others felt.
My students are still talking about the experience! We learned so much from your resources given that we are limited to support from mentors.
My students also noticed that you guys outscored the #1 alliance in the finals matches twice with respect to cargo points (against 2 very tough teams). The endgame was the difference.
You guys had a great showing and we will forever remember that regional.
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It was a pleasure to watch 4522 and 4766 compete at the Heartland regional. While the robots look very similar due to being built within the same school with the same resources, the robots are not identical. 4766, (SCREAM Jr.) built a simplified robot that focused on shooting from against the hub and a mid level climber while 4522 had a shooter with more features and a traversal climber. From my perspective the second team was used effectively to engage younger students by giving them opportunities to be on the drive team and work in the pits. I think its a model that other large teams with lots of students should consider.
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I definitely was thinking of SCREAM Jr. in the second group. It is 4766 btw. And the student I talked with was a little less liking the Jr. moniker, even though it is the younger members. It also seemed like they had at least some mentors that worked more with the JV squad. It is anyhow a pretty nice way to structure a team and I’d like to see more of it around.
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It is close but the JV squad built a different robot even if it looks similar because they share in design style, shop resources and some mentors.
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Awesome having twins.
In 2019 in China, we had a team copy our robot without us even knowing. They got our Technical Binder from the Hawaii Regional and built it during the offseason.
Not as crazy/cool as the team that copied 118 previously, but we were still flattered.
We even got to play against them. 
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Thanks for clarifying. I follow them on Facebook so I just saw the photos and the bots appeared quite similar.
1923s mentors discussed in another thread that they didn’t have mentor bandwidth to supervise 2 separate designs. I think this is a pretty valid reason.
If I was able to form a second team for 177, I would also build different robots, but we have quite a bit of machining resources and mentors.
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