Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

This is a really good point. I hadn't even considered the number of teams making dedicated low bar shooters... I think it's time for a new poll.

EDIT: Here's the poll. Results are already a little frightening.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

You're overlooking a very big part of the game, and ultimately what pushed many teams toward a low bar oriented strategy. You need 8 balls scored to capture. If you want to reliably get that ranking point, especially at early events, you will want to do that by ferrying balls into the low goal. The low bar is probably the only reasonable shot of a single robot trying to stuff anywhere close to 8 balls in that goal every match. Trying to get an 8 ball throughput, even spread across the entire alliance, will require going to the secret passage early and often, and there's no faster way to it than the low bar.

If one of the ranking points was not predicated on scoring a high volume of balls I do not think the low bar would have been such a high priority for so many teams. But maybe I'm overestimating the depths of team strategic analysis, and people just decided to try and do everything.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

This is what we are trying to do. We always try to go for the supporting role as we just don't have the resources or the capabilities to be an all out offense robot. Unfortunately, I think a lot of teams this year have picked up on that strategy. (i suppose that's good for tall shooter robots who will have a lot of options come alliance selections)

I'm predicting that in the first few weeks of regionals, there will be several winning alliances that cheescaked a tall blocker onto one of the small support robots that will shut down the alliances of small shooters.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

My team is building a low bar low goal robot. We also have a 3ft long arm we use for defense manipulation as well as scaling. After seeing the polls about a week ago, we decided to mount a large plastic sheet to the arm for blocking shots. With all the short shooters I have a feeling we will mainly be using the arm for defense.

I don't know why Karthik is terrified, but my team could not be happier about the results of these polls.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

I had taken the tower strength into account. There is 15s in auto and 135s in teleop. Let's say you can round trip a shot in 15s, probably faster doing the low bar. If you plan to capture or climb in the last 20s (i.e. you're going for that capture rank point), you can still get 8 shots in between auto and teleop. More shots are better of course, especially if you miss. My concern is if a design compromises the shooting accuracy even if it is low goal, more round trips are required to get the same effectiveness, potentially making the extra speed a wash.

Winning gets you two rank points. Breaching also gets a ranking point. The low bar gets you up to 10 points, it works as one of the four defenses needed to breach, and it cycles the ball faster. It's a nice piece to something bigger. If reality ends up reflecting this poll, low bar capable bots will be a very plentiful resource.

Of course, if a team can pull off the low bar and excellent shooting and/or a variety of defense breaching, that will be a very effective bot indeed.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Here is a possible reason why Karthik is terrified. Think about the following:

How many points do you think you can score with your strategy?
Could you build a tall robot that scores more points?
Do you have the resources to do so?
If you did, would you choose the low bar robot anyways?

It appears many teams are. Those teams are going to score fewer points than the tall counterparts, and the robots that are relying on passing through the low bar (apparently about 90% of teams are going to for the most part) are going to experience a lot of congestion that will slow down gameplay even more. 4/5 of the field will not be utilized to its full potential in that case (except for perhaps the breach points), which makes for a much more boring game. Not to mention, defense selection is going to be a lot less valuable than we thought.

However, one of the biggest problems is when defense is stronger than offense. If an underdog alliance can shut down a powerhouse alliance from defense, it gets exciting because the playing field is more level. If neither alliance can score boulders due to defensive wall bots (which are easy to make), then the game will also be extremely boring. It's like a game of basketball where neither team can score.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

I think that Karthik is terrified because he doesn't want to make everyone feel bad when they show up with a low bar bot that unfolds to shoot 100% at 54 inches. :eek:
He also could have thought that it would be a less utilized strategy. Now he is sad that he wont have a unique robot.

Bees? Bees!

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

FYI my final answer is Karthik is mostly terrified of the near certainty that somewhere in the world someone has unironically written Karthik Kanagasabapathy fanficition.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Yup. Last year we thought that it would be slower to cap your own stacks, so we decided to split the task. As it turned out lots of teams were able to effectively build and cap stacks. We knew we were not going to seed well with the robot at the regional, but thought that a specialist would come into play at the championship level. While we had a reasonably successful season, we were wrong in our choice. But that's how you learn and grow.

We are taking the approach this year of trying to control our own destiny, but still thinking about how we will fit with other robots on the field.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

With so many teams attempting (keyword: attempting) the low bar, my concern for them is going to be standing out enough to be a good potential alliance pick. If everyone's doing the low bar, that means you'll have to be able to do a number of other things to avoid blending in with every other low bar robot.

The issue here is whether teams are taking too much risk in trying to do other non-low bar tasks well that they don't do very well at anything, including the low bar.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

If you are going to pick one thing to be good at, why pick the thing that every alliance only benefits from having one of (and that many shooting robots may want to utilize to improve their cycle times)?

If you are going to pick two things to be good at, why make one of them the thing that is most difficult to integrate with most other robot functions?

If you are going to pick three things to be good at, now you have two functions that are difficult to integrate...and now most teams are well on their way to ineffective robots.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Wait, maybe we've got the question wrong!

Instead of "What is terrifying Karthik?" maybe we should be asking "Why is Karthik terrifying?"

Could it be his horns?

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

This^

I totally agree with that sentiment as it applies to the majority of teams. I think that if you compound this with the idea that some things that will be incredibly important at a high level become nearly impossible to implement on a low robot. (such as the ability to shoot over a defender with a pool noodle, or having an accurate and reliable shooter) Then it starts to look like there are few teams for which the decision to go under the bar is a good one.
(exceptions may include young teams who don't plan on shooting high, those who plan on seeding high but aren't concerned with boulder shooting, and potentially those who could not produce a shooter that can hit from the outer works to begin with)

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

So Joe, who is the winner?!?

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

He probably hasn't decided and/or is getting a 2nd opinion (maybe from Karthik himself?)

Patience...

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

I'm probably too late for the Mountain Dew (don't drink it anyway), but here goes:

The poll results terrify Karthik. If these results were expected, they would not terrify Karthik. Therefore these results were unexpected. This means that the Simbotics strategy committee miscalculated the frequency of strategies being employed by teams. To someone as good at understanding and predicting strategy as Karthik, that in itself could be terrifying.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

I see what you're saying, but here was our thought process.

Team defenses don't match the real thing, and adding polycarbonate/aluminum sheet only gets it so close to the real thing. It would be an entire tangential fundraising/toolset to get the real defenses built. In our analysis we wanted to be able to ensure the breaching bonus as well as the contribute to the weakening bonus as best as possible. In order to do that, we first determined the rolling drive train properties across the defenses. Then we decided to hedge against the fact that we probably won't solve one of the real defenses even though we've solved it in our shop.

Thus, in order to ensure we could still hit our target of X out of 5 categories of defenses, low bar became a major target. We'll find a partner or two to compliment us for elims.

Then there is the utility for cycling. An entire zone of the field surrounding the low bar becomes obsolete without the ability to go under the bar. It even becomes a liability in the wrong situation. It's definitely a tradeoff though.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Hmmm....

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Did I miss the post? Is Karthik still terrified?

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

There are so many posts in this thread, that while Joe Johnson was reading through them all, he got thirsty and drank all 12 cans of mountain dew himself.

Karthik is likely still terrified.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

FIRST, Work, & Home have conspired to postpone the judging... ...until now.

I am going to kind of live tweet this thing.

100+ message to get through. Let's see how it goes.

1. Joe Johnson: Awesome post, as usual. I expect nothing less ;-)
2. bobjones227: joke
3. Basel A: lots of shorties means lots of blocked shots = terrifying
4. Kevin Sevcik: traffic jams + design compromises = terrifying
5. Chris is me: massive design compromises that are unnecessary in the numbers that the poll indicates.
6. tindleroot: Low bar means no high goal, hanging, & other defense = game sucking = terrifying
7. Bryce2471: Complements me and then poses the possibility that 1114 has chosen a Me Too strategy and that is terrifying Karthik. I am going to have to be honest. Starting with complements. Good idea. Thinking 1114 is going to go with anything close to a Me Too strategy. Not your best idea. But good try.
8. Jon Stratis: Well written. Limbo is hard. Harder still if you want to do X,Y, & Z. For most teams it is biting off more than they can chew. Poor performing robots = Terrifying.
9. nighterfighter: Poll analysis. Rookie Mis-judging difficulty, Many teams will do a sloppy job of defining requirements so they won't even limbo, teams are overvaluing one feature, teams will just be terrible. Posits theory that I want to be a barista based on scanty evidence. False.
10. Lidor51: If Everyone can limbo, then it is of no advantage. Better to be a tall robot and be good at that without having to have compromised other features.
11. rsisk: Canada joke. I've had a Canadian on my team for the last 2 years in which as a team we've probably made 100s of Canadian jokes at his expense. He's a good sport but at this point these jokes are well beyond their best if used by date. I'm tossing them in the trashbin.
12. Ginger Power: Design tradeoffs = less interesting = Terrifying
13. efoote868: Got to love the Triple Tortuga reference. And a link to a fish in the face gif. The force is strong in this one...
14. Jcarbon: Underestatation of task = Learning Too Late = Terrifying. Simple logic and probably very true.
15. Rangel(kf7fdb): Robots driving over robots may be a thing = funny (and Terrifying)
16. Andrew Schreiber: "Karthik is scared teams are going to overestimate how much they don't suck." I think you may be on to something there. It is the Elephant in the room but yeah, a lot of teams really don't have a realistic view of their team's capabilities.
17. pwnageNick: 90% is not high enough = Terrifying -- I like how you're thinking out of the box but I doubt that is the thing that's terrifying.
18. Keefe2471: Posted quote from Joe G. TLDR: WE decided to Limbo but we are worried that THEY will struggle. ... Scaling in 2016 = Canburglaring in 2015. ... There are better ways to play the game than to limbo. Joe G. has a lot of great things to say but he lost me with Scaling is this year's Canburglaring. One literally ended the game on Einstein in the first second of autonomous and mattered almost not at all for 95% of the matches. Scaling is just one more way to get 10 points by a robot. It matters but it is not in the same class.
19. New Lightning: Lack of robot diversity => lack of strategy diversity = Terrifying.
20. safiq10: Mutombo shotblocking meme to emphasis low shooter's dilemna Not a bad effort.
21. cadandcookies: Also noted Schreiber's Team's overestimate how much they don't suck quote. Expounded upon his personal views that align with this, even to the point of pointing out his own robotics team is not an exception to this rule. Also said a lot of things that others have already said but quite eloquently.
22. Procolsaurus: Wiring challenge = Terrifying.
23. AdamStockton: Another nice discusion of tradeoffs ending up with very compromised robots
24. Anteprefix: Single Tortuga blocking traffic at the low bar. -- again, I like the Tortuga reference. Know your judge...
25. MaGiC_PiKaChU: Achondroplasiaphobe joke? Really?
26. IronicDeadBird: Makes the good point that short robots are going to be very hard to see from a distance and that it could lead to a lot of unintentional traffic jams, penalties, and other things are going to be as fun to watch as paint dry.
27. Caleb Sykes: Teams that CAN limbo but take forever to do so = Terrifying
28. Shrub: Water game joke.
29. matthewdenny: random spider reference
30. Billfred: Teams will learn late (e.g. at a competition) that they can't limbo after all and by then they can't put the genie back in the bottle (i.e. recover the capabilities they lost trying to limbo)
31. Woolly: Good discussion of Auton Implications of 90% limbo robots. Loses me a little discussing 2-3 ball autons but otherwise I'm with her.
32. pandamonium: deleted
33. mrnoble: it only takes two stuck robots to completely screw up an entire match if all that teams can do is limbo.
34. cmwilson13: Don't forget 2011 (Logo Motion? Maybe he means 2010 & Breakaway?)
35. Mitchell1714: Waterloo has all Limbo Robots BUT 1114 = Terrifying. I think this is unlikely on many counts but IF 1114 doesn't limbo, it may be terrifying but not to Karthik but to everyone ELSE. The same way it was terrifying to see all those stacks last year. Terr-i-fy-ing!
36. EricH: Complements to the CD crowd (calling us the top half). Good start. Poor Planning on most teams' part => traffic jam for all in the Neutral Zone for all = Terrifying Finishes with a statement that I can only guess was meant to imply that his team is NOT going to limbo.
37. mrnoble: Concerning cmwilson13's 2011 reference. Stronghold could be worse in some ways.
38. Richard Wallace: Failed Limbo attempts will lead to tortugas => randomized seedings.
39. PayneTrain: Stronghold is unique in FRC games in the amount scoring it provides for robot movement alone (I think maybe 2008 - Overdrive was close?). Terrifying = Hyperbole. Brings in the "pinch point" of Ranking given that one team can get 1+ RP on its own but can't get that 2nd 1+ RP without all robots. Points out that Tall Blocker Robots needed to advance in Elims but there won't be enough to go around (1 per Alliance). Closes with One Stuck Robot => Alliance is screwed.
40. JesseK: It's a metaphor... ...about CD polls.
41. Ryan Dognaux: Weight is so much less of a factor this year plus you don't need to shoot from far away to score in the high goal. Having team on your alliance that tries to do too much but fails = Terrifying.
42. hectorcastillo: Karthik miscalculated limbo height = terrifying
43. staplemonx: link to a video of a "Soft robot" using body flexing to limbo under a pane of class. It is kind of cool but also kind of creepy. AND it takes for ever. It IS Terrifying. Bonus link to a Great White North Video. Too easy.
44. PayneTrain: ...
45. MrJohnston: Karthik is confused (and possibly drunk)
46. DesignComp: Joke referencing Karthik's last name?
47. evanperryg: Karthik is terrified at the poor thinking skills of teams, chosing to forgo 10 easy points for a traffic jam, especially if a defender is helping gum up the works. BUT "The few low bar teams who have consistent high-elevation shooters will be ridiculously strong against poorly coordinated alliances." I think you are right. Effective ball gathering + Limbo + Effective high release long distance shooting = Top 1 or 2 seed at almost every competition.
48. DohertyBilly: So many limbo robots means teams are not doing the many other things that they could be doing which is a shame because there are a lot of things worth doing this year = a Real Shame (which is almost terrifying)
49. ratdude747: Thought message. Compares Low bar to Tunnel in 2010 and in that year, it didn't end well for most teams that designed to get through the Tunnel. Gave a lot of examples of 2010 design tradeoffs that hurt teams then and then made the connection that this year's game is worse.
50. Collin Fultz: Emcees tripping over low robots = terrifying ;-)
51. Taylor: Ohio joke plus worry about Tortugad robots on the Batter.
52. pfreivald: Where did Tortuga come from? What is this some sort of a "Why did the chicken cross the road" reference? Well I'll TELL YOU. That Turtle came from Manchester, NH and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
53. orangemoore: reference to Triple Tortuga thread.
54. Sperkowsky: Personal experience shows that perhaps this is all overblown. His team has managed to get a high shooter to limbo and if they can do it anyteam can. From your keyboard to God's ears. That's All I have to say.
55. Chris Endres: This year's Cool Kids Club may be tall robots and Karthik may find himself on the outside looking in.
56. Andrew Schreiber: Popularity of thread makes him laugh.
57. AdamHeard: Awkward is the word for this thread.
58. Anupam Goli: It is THIS thread that = Terrifying Karthik
59. marshall: metafied - I like it.
60. Taylor: I don't get it.
61. Abc123454321: Limbo is a good choice because it puts your team in charge of its own destiny unlike canburlar specialist robots last year.
62. Monochron: seconded above comment
63. Ginger Power: A red head is also confused by Taylor
64. IKE: Good discussion about striving for excellence and importance of being good at a smaller set of things than so so at a larger set. Finishing with Karthik is trying to help teams by having them think hard about their decisions (maybe this is what I'M doing -- maybe Karthik and I are in league together -- who can disprove it?)
65. PayneTrain: Fanboy thread alert.
66. GMeyer: Karthik is worried about a world with haves and have nots where good teams run of the score against bad teams (like basically every FRC game ever ;-) If so, GMeyer says relax. Teams will adjust as the season progresses.
67. Doug G: Limbo = compromised designs
68. GMeyer: 1114 might not limbo and he's concerned they'll be the odd man out.
69. cait.schroeder: Laundry list of good reasons to be terrified. Including the idea that Karthik is loosing his mind. I can't argue with that. Terrifying indeed.
70. cj3958: argrees with one of Cait's reasons.
71. Citrus Dad: So many teams getting it RIGHT = Terrifying
72. nuggetsyl: People are underestimating shooting?
73. SM987: Poll vs Pole pun. Nice.
74. PayneTrain: #TeamTether reference. Careful. There are folks with PTSD and this hashtag might be a trigger...
75. BethMo: vote for SM987
76. Peyton Yeung: joke
77. Captain_Kirch: joke
78. cait.schroeder: self selected polls have data bias problems
79. anishde: Karthik can generate a lot of chatter (with help from yours truly don't forget)
80. Koko Ed: Penalties are even more scary than 90% limbo wannabees
81. Brian C: seconded Ed
82. Tim Sharp: thirded Ed plus more emphasis
83. Justin Montois: Karthik is daunted by the stats task ahead of him
84. Craig: short robot chaos will ensue = terrifying
85. eedoga: whip antenna's my help with chaos (I don't think so)
86. JABot67: Limbo is too popular. It will be hard to find 3rd robot for alliance. Cheesy Poofs are going big this year. Scary.
87. JesseK: who said Poofs are going big?
88. JABot67: POLL RESULTS ARE PUBLIC (I didn't know that. Sorry if I totally screwed over some teams)
89. Rangel(kf7fdb): poll results should be taken with grain of salt
90. cait.schroeder: worried that I will only consider old time CD folk. This is not true. It is THIS THREAD contribution that I am judging not ALL THREADS. Rest assured.
91. Joe Johnson: Dang, this is taking a LONG TIME to do. Hope someone (anyone) is still reading this thing.
92. AdamHeard: ironic post about Poofs designing non-robust solutions that small rules changes will defeat. As if!
93. BL0X3R: Low bar = too much compromise for most (but not all) teams.
94. GaryVoshol: SM987 reference
95. Rangel(kf7fdb): Twerk reference (bonus if someone gets a Hanna Montana reference into this thread)
96. XaulZan11: Dis of scissor lifts. I'm good with that.
97. Alex Chamberlin: Non lowbar folks will be left out?
98. Ginger Power: Karthik is the Bill Belichick of FIRST FRC -- couldn't agree more (and I'm not talking the "We'll let the Broncos have the ball first in Overtime Bill" but the "We've got no running backs so we're throwing the ball every down against KC Bill")
99. evanperryg: 3 Cycler Alliance Analysis plus another joke about what the Poofs will (or rather will NEVER) do.
100. GeeTwo: It's not the % of low bars but the % of low bars ONLY teams that's scary. True dat.
101. jweston: Analysis questioning the calculation that are behind low bar if they are based on speed. Wonders if they are planning on scoring balls or just ferrying. If the latter, it is going to be a long long season.
     ***********************************************
     also I am finally to the 100th Post in this Thread. Phew... ...it's all down hill from here...
     ***********************************************
102. evanperryg: Good point GeeTwo. New Poll proposed (terrifying)
103. Chris is me: analysis of weakening towers with a low bar/low goal ferry robot. I don't agree with his conclusions (8 Balls for a team that decided to be build that robot is asking a lot -- not that it won't happen but really. I don't see the type of teams that builds this robot being the type of team that gets the fine details right to be able to cycle fast enough to get 8 balls done in a match) But a good thing to discuss.
104. Kingland093: His team will build a boulder ferry robot, validating jweston's point. But he predicts that Tall Blocker Cheesecaking will be popular in the early weeks of the season (does anybody have a special name for Tall Cheesecake? It would be great to get that into the FIRST lexicon).
105. BotDesigner: His team is building a limbo robot with a bad $@#$@#$@# blocker feature. He's happy as a clam about the poll results (thinking he'll have a lot of shorty shooters to defend against)
106. jweston: rebuttal of Chris is me's points above.
107. tindleroot: rebuttal of BotDesigner's arguments. Defense vs. Offense arguments.
108. Torvando: 1114 will be awesome and Karthik is terrified of making others look bad. I only have this to say about that. After looking at last year's robot I don't see how you can say this motivates anyone on 1114 yet alone Karthik, the man.
109. swaxman12345: whoosh. That's all I heard.
110. PayneTrain: Kanagasabapathy fanfic is a thing? Count me in ;-)
111. Greg Needel: Controlling your own destiny is nice. A lesson learned by a team that decided to only one task last year (Cap stacks or Make stacks, not sure which).
     *****************************************
     Oh HEY. IT IS AFTER MIDNIGHT SO THE CONTEST IS OVER
     I will keep reading but the winner is based on what came above, not below
     *****************************************
112. NShep98: Standing out is going to be tough if you do what 90% of other teams do (or try to do). Will teams end up doing all things poorly as a result of this tough challenge? I agree and disagree. I think that any team that can limbo AND do something else of value well (shoot in the high goal with a high release, cross defenses well, play defense well, pick up balls well, ...) will definitely stand out and be drafted very early.
113. Jared Russell: nevermind
114. Jared Russell: nevermind
115. Jared Russell: VERY interesting analysis about making choices. "and now most teams are well on their way to ineffective robots." You speak the truth I fear. Everyone else read this post and remember it for next year. The problem I keep coming back to is that most teams do not see their own weaknesses. They think, "this is what the Poofs will do so MY team has to do that too" or fill in the blank (HOT, Nutrons, Pink, Miss Daisy, ...) You have to know what YOUR TEAM can finish, on time, under budget. If you fail that test, you fail period.
116. Richard Wallace: Why IS KK terrifying? Good question. I don't think Horns have anything to do with it.
117. Bryce2471: Jared Russell is brilliant. Who doesn't know that? But I concur.
118. cait.schroeder: who's the winner? Cait, I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Give me some space girl! ;-)
119. ratdude747: Joe's getting a 2nd opinion. Probably would have been a good idea, but no. I'm on my own here
120. GeeTwo: Nice Meta-meta analysis. But I'm not buying it.
121. JesseK: Jared Russell for President (or maybe VP behind Karthik at the top of the ticket -- they'd get my vote).
122. Citrus Dad: ?
123. Foster: hurry up, Dr. Joe. I am pedaling as fast as I can here...
124. Caleb Sykes: Suggests that I drank the prize while judging. Caleb, you are not wrong as it did take me many a Dew to get to the FINAL post I am judging.
     
     

So... ...where does that leave us? I am going to make a clean post to announce the winner. Stay tuned...

Dr. Joe J.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

There were a LOT of great points made in this thread, TOO MANY to be fair to all the great folks who really put some thought into what they wanted to say.

I want to say that it is my sincere hope that a few more teams really put thought into two particular possible futures:

1) MAYBE your team can have a great season being something other than a Limbo Robot. You may be better off if, by not having to go under the Low Bar, you are able to give your robot other capabilities that you would not be able to have otherwise.

2) IF YOU ARE GOING TO LIMBO ANYWAY, make sure that that is not the ONLY thing you can do. Don't be that robot. Add value to the alliance beyond the low bar.

Now for the moment you've all be reading for.

And the winner is...

Andrew Schreiber. He made a lot of good points but for me he sealed the deal with this quote:

It isn't a fair contest, but life isn't fair.

Andrew, it didn't figure into the decision but you've disavowed the Mt. Dew prize (I don't understand some people) saying you'd prefer judge referrals for the Boston District. You shall have them sir.

PM me and we'll work things out.

Well done everyone.

Cheers,
Dr. Joe J.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

I was tempted to say something about giant balloons being terrifying ...

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Just to clarify: I did not mean to suggest that Scaling is of comparable overall strategic importance to Canburgling. Rather, I wanted to look at the the variety of tasks FRC games have presented, and the degree to which they actually impart hard tradeoffs into the design process and require detailed analysis to determine if the pros of going for a given task outweigh the cons. There were a whole lot of teams in 2015 that justified their decision not to initially incorporate Canburglers into their 2015 robots with logic based very firmly on a purist sense of "we're not going to try to do everything, we have a simple robot, Canburglers are hard," when even a low tier Canburgler (a stick on a Versaplanetary or 3/4" bore piston) achievable by nearly every team and addable to nearly every robot after the fact could literally have become the most attractive robot feature of a good chunk of FRC teams. I think we will see a similar pattern in scaling this year. There have been a lot of rumblings about how hard and not worth it scaling is, but like Canburgling, it can be achieved effectively by small "auxillary" mechanisms, the type that's easy to work into any robot with withholding after seeing a cool implementation in someone else's reveal video. It won't provide the massive gains that Cangurglers did, but it's a potentially worthwhile bonus with very little risk associated with it.

The idea was to contrast this kind of task with the low bar, which dominates the design process with brutal tradeoffs in a way that these tasks just don't, not to imply that Scaling will be the sole deciding factor on Einstein. Scaling was a particularly handy way to illustrate the relative worth of the low bar because so many teams are claiming "Low bar is more important than scaling" through their designs and priorities, and a good scaler should have a much more consistent expected value for thee act of scaling than a shooter.

Also we're definitely worried about struggling as well :p . We think that we've approached the tradeoffs inherit to our strategy in a way that plays to our team's strengths and mitigates some of the chronic problems we expect many low bar machines to experience. Scarcity did play into our decision making process, and we expected low bar machines to be far less common than recent polls have suggested. We're locked in now and it's going reasonably well (I'm feeling quite a bit more confident in our design, and by extension, many other teams' designs, than I was when I made that post), but if we knew then what we know now, we may have still gone down a different path.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Thats a weird way to spell my name...
But yeah dat quote doe.

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

I know the competition is over, but I feel the need to share the real reason that Karthik is terrified:

I love the spotlight feature:D

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

How have I never seen this?

Re: Terrifying Karthik
 

Plot twist: regardless of the results of the poll, Karthik would find them terrifying

Karthik is always terrified