Lets do it again...
 

If you were given a redo of one first season's robot for your team, which season would you redo?

Re: Lets do it again...
 

2014.

It was a really cool game in my opinion but our team never truly got to play it.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

Our 2015 season. Many things to change there.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

2012 or 2013 for 1257. It wasn't until after those seasons that we really got the hang of designing and building within our resources.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

2016

Re: Lets do it again...
 

I wish I could do 2015 and 2016. These were the only two years since our initial rookie year that we haven't made it past qualification rounds. Both of these years we made some very idiotic choices early on which led to our downfall each year. In 2015, we decided to go with a winch driven forklift, which then would get tangled or break. We replaced this with a chain link system for our off season, and was the second pick on the #3 seed. In 2016, we decided to make our main manipulator out of copper tube because a mentor was confident in it. "It won't bend, and if it does, we'll just bend it back". Five matches later and we're desperately trying to reinforce this. If it wasn't for these two stupid mistakes, I think we would have gone on to at least quarter finals in the KC regional.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

Absolutely 2013. It was our rookie year, so we stuck to a basic design for just the low goal. Certainly, just adding a high goal capability would be fun to do

Re: Lets do it again...
 

Since my one and only FRC season went pretty well, I'll answer with a game I wish my team got to do, 2013: Ultimate Ascent. At least for me, a frisbee shooting robot that can also climb a pyramid would just be awesome to design and build. Also, you get a pretty cool bot for demos out of it.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

2004.
Great game. We were top heavy and fell over alot.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

2015.

Easily the most beautifully engineered robot we've ever made (it even had WINGS!) that placed 34th and 35th at low tier districts q.q

The entire season we were pretty much a beautiful bot that was worse than most KoP bots.

If I was given the ability to make small changes, 2016. The robot had the potential to be so much better but our mechanical crew couldn't stretch outside of their comfort zone (allowing our intake to get balls on the edge of the bumper, speeding it up to get balls faster, *cough* auto targeting *cough*, pneumatic wheels)

Re: Lets do it again...
 

2014 pretty easily. Ironically, that was the year we reached the finals at one of our events.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

Me personally, 2006.

My team... let's just go with there are a few years that we don't talk about.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

2014 / 2015 for the same reason.
Active control of game pieces throughout all stages of your robot's interactions with it is critical. Never let gravity/inertia control the game piece. If you want a game piece to go somewhere, you MAKE it go there.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

Can you further explain 2015 seeing that you were world champions

Re: Lets do it again...
 

I would love to replay pretty much all of the games since Ultimate Ascent other than Recycle Rush. And I don't say that just because I disliked Recycle Rush as a game. I'm happy with what my team accomplished in 2013, our Rookie year, but I'd love to replay that just because that's such a fun game.
I'd like to redo 2014 because our bot could have been seriously improved just by throwing more motors on it. We only had two CIMs on our drivetrain, one CIM powering the entirety of our manipulator, and one window motor powering our intake. We worked, but we worked slowly. Simple changes would have made a big difference in our performance.
I wish we could replay Stronghold just because we made some serious errors in team and robot management at the Regional. I was proud of the robot, but disappointed with how we played the game.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

Sure.

Our 2015 robot was by no measure a dominant tote handling robot. While the claw itself held onto totes reasonably well, the system by which the totes were staged for the claw was sort of an afterthought. We relied on totes exiting the chute door consistently and landing on the floor in the same position every time. By the time we hit the competition field, we realized that this was not something we could rely on.
Adding an active intake system would have solved this issue and made us a better tote handler. We later confirmed this at our final offseason event where our newly installed intake system helped us to increase our tote output from 2-4 totes scored per match to 8-10 totes scored per match.

As a team, we like to look at everything we do, from great success to disappointing losses, and we try to learn from them to continuously improve. Every experience will yield a powerful lesson learned.
I believe that critically evaluating all past experiences, regardless of win or lose, is a skill that will make average teams good and good teams great.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

In another note, here's a part full regret, part funny story. In 2009, you'll se that we were ranked #2 at the GKC regional. We were (I'm told, I wasn't even in FLL at the time) ranked #1 consistently up to our very last match. About thirty seconds after autonomous ends, another robot, I don't know which alliance, tips over onto our robot, landing directly on our emergency stop switch. There's nothing we can do, we just have to sit there for the rest of the match. We still ended tip #2 at the end of the day, but we didn't get any farther than semi-finals. Still our best year, AFAIK.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

2015?

Re: Lets do it again...
 

Lunacy, that game looks so cool, I want to play Lunacy

Re: Lets do it again...
 

You know, I thought this was a universal truth about FRC, as well. We call it "positive control".

Then 195 puts out a robot that drops balls from their intake onto their catapult and dominates the New England District.

I don't know what to believe anymore.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

2014 because that was a fun game and I feel like our team had so much potential to do better that year if we only made a few changes.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

There's lots of exceptions to this rule, and it's worth studying when they matter. The key is to realize that this rule is most applicable when you are holding multiple, compliant game pieces, or game pieces that need to be in a specific orientation to be scored.

2013 - Almost every competitive Frisbee hopper in the world was a gravity fed bucket. Why did this work? The bucket controlled the orientation of the Frisbees, the bucket dimensions prevented Frisbees from sliding into or past each other, and the rigid nature of the Frisbees prevented them from sticking or jamming.

2015 - No defense and nesting features of the game pieces made active control of everything not a huge deal.

2016 - One game piece, relatively short distance from intake to shooting position, protected zone for ball to gravity drop in without defense disturbing the ball, ball can be fired from any arbitrary orientation.

Knowing when breaking a "hard rule" can drastically simplify a design is a key skill in FIRST. I think many FIRST robot designers have been unwilling to let go of a cardinal rule to the detriment of their robot at least once before. Or sometimes, many many times...

Re: Lets do it again...
 

2008, we completely overlooked actually shooting the ball over the truss. Bot ended up doing well but that could have made a big difference. Also, not integrating the Gen 1 AM shifter into the wheel-well would have certainly helped at champs when the thing died :(

Re: Lets do it again...
 

2015
Our team has some trouble with agreeing on a design and while we did alright, we could have done better.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

Hush. Us old people have bad memories.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

2013.

Classic over-complication of strategy by also trying to go after the floor frisbees in auton. Was the year we had a hard lesson about simple things that cycle fast.

There were a lot of shoulda's from that year.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

Definitely 2013.

Extreme robot diversity at the highest level, great depth of strategy though more favoring alliance composition, and super fun to watch to boot.

Re: Lets do it again...
 

I don't know how difficult it was for other teams, but 469 went through a pretty significant amount of iteration to make sure frisbees didn't jam in the bucket. Passive systems often take a bit more finagling to work the way you want them to.