Oh man, where to begin!
- Not lock ourselves into a poor design in the effort of staying on track.
- Not make a dual axle shooter. It doubles complexity, weight, and fixing time while making backspin harder to acheive
- Never ever use Double Doozy Gearboxes for Banebots RS550's. They removed the listing that they were compatible after we called Andy and described our eternal problems with them.
- Figure out the underlying problem with our shooter rather than trying to work around it (We are currently using 4 FP level motors in our shooter, when most teams have had success with much less power)
- Test and figure out the ideal variables rather than using the "it works? Let's use it!" philosophy that got us a shooter with a minimum shooting distance of 15 ft
- Design a bridge manipulator that actually worked when we got to competition
- Design a stinger or some other balance assist device to include with an over the bump collection mechanism.
- I can't believe we missed over the bump collectors but we did. Completely flew over our heads.
- Actually checked in with the Chairmans crew before the evening it was due. The 1 day delay saved us.
- Invest in autonomous over teleop. We ran the statistics, and at our first regional, if we had a bottom basket autonomous working every match (which required very little tuning of our shooter), we would have seeded 2nd rather than 6th.
At the same time, there were a few things that I wouldn't change if I were to do it over. I would stay a wide robot. I would keep our excellent frame and drive system (pushiest treads in FIRST). I would keep the great increase in outreach and programs that won us the Engineering Inspiration Award. I would play in game the exact same way (Coop all the time) and I would pick the exact same alliances that we triple balanced with.