[slijin]

Adding to bridge manipulators:

Passive downwards manipulation. Teams with tusks or wedges (e.g. 233, 1114, to ashamedly toot my own horn, 694) could drive into the bridge while pushing it down, instead of driving up to it, slamming it down, fiddling so that it didn't hit the bumpers or whatnot, and then driving up the bridge.

Passive upwards manipulation. Teams with frames angled upwards (e.g. 3847, 118, and some other team used this during elims somewhere very consistently) could lift the bridge up to allow other teams onto the bridge first. This created two advantages - 1, teams without a manipulator or an effective one could drive up very easily, and 2, teams with low traction could end up on the bridge first, allowing the robot that pushed it up to follow it up.

IMHO, 118's in a category of their own. Their entire frame was built for passive bridge manipulation - both pushing it down and lifting it up - and a good portion of their mechanisms were devoted to balance assists. They had a beautiful system to assist a double balance, complete with lights to indicate an unbalanced v balanced bridge. And that's all before their stinger.

The decision to have the shooter face one side by default, and have the acquirer/bridge manipulator on the other side allowed teams to execute an auton in which they backed up to and scored balls from the coop (or in 254's case, the alliance bridge). Off the top of my head, 341, 233, and 254 pulled this off.