Team 180 had comm problems and we worked through them. We lost communications in the last match as well. However, we were ready at a moment's notice to reboot the robot to get as much play time as we possibly could. We foresaw this potential problem and changed our strategy on the fly. Also, I showed some of the 118 kids how to reboot and what to look for in the event of a problem. I'm not sure if they tried it or not, but I wanted them to move almost as much as they did.
The reason our alliance played so well was that 16 could retrieve balls from our opponents and pass them to us. I didn't see any other team play such incredible defense the entire competition. One could perhaps even go so far as to say that that Bomb Squad could have been paired with any two good key shooters and come out extremely competitive. I'm sure there were a couple good robots that were individually better than any robot on our alliance, but the alliance teamwork is what made the difference.
We could also triple balance very quickly. I think the fact that we never had to shows more than actually triple balancing. I hope that hateful comments such as these aren't shared with the kids. This certainly doesn't help spread the message of FIRST.
- Bryce