Listen. Everything I'm going to say is in your best interest, with the sole intent of helping you. I want you to understand that.

DO NOT BUILD A DEFENSIVE ROBOT. I don't care what your team says, show them this. KatieUPS will agree with me, ask her. If you build an offensive robot that ends up not working, you can always play defense. If you make a defensive robot that ends up not working, you're screwed. You want to be able to score in some way possible each year, no matter what.

For starters, if you DO do defense this year, you better have a good as (excuse my language) hell defensive strategy. If you are on the opponent's side without knowing what you're doing and being able to execute it 100% of the time, then you'll be getting more penalties than you're worth. Defense this year will be extremely difficult to do unless you are prepared for it. I'm not saying you aren't, but even for prepared teams it'll be tough and risky.

My solution is this: Create a way you can at least gather balls and shoot/throw them. You may be able to only score on the lowest hoop in autonomous and feed your team balls the rest of the match, but it's a lot better than defense this year, and a lot more valuable.

If you have any questions, please feel free to PM/contact me for ideas/designs. We're chalk full of them, and would be more than happy to share with second year team.


Now to answer your original question. Treads, while useful, can be pretty tough to get right, and are a lot harder than they seem. Use wheels.