Quote:
Originally Posted by ~Cory~
Its still pretty surprising that breakaway ranked so low. IMHO: aim high and breakway FTW.
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I personally disliked Breakaway, mostly because it discouraged different designs (even by FIRST standards) and every robot looked the same. As far as the past few years are concerned, FIRST already ends up being a bunch of very similar robots, with the most well refined design winning, but 2010 was worse than usual (really only 469 had a successful 'unique' design). Also, the issues in the ranking system early on really turned me off to it.
The only redeeming part was the end-game, which encouraged a ton of innovative designs.
To be fair, I was raised on BEST Robotics, so I have a thing for solutions that can do about 7 separate operations at once using 2 motors and maybe a servo or two. I also love plywood, PVC, and duct tape. I mean, in 2010 I made a (ridiculously successful) sub-assembly that was composed entirely of 1 motor, bits of string, an entire roll of duct tape, and two small sections of PVC pipe. Now, it was all very precise (we made at least 12 prototype versions of that thing to perfect it) and looked quite good by BEST standards, but I never saw anything quite like it the whole year.