[mikegrundvig]

After last year's competitions, I have serious doubts about teams making tons of consistent 3 point shots. If your robot can climb quickly up and down (call it 20 seconds each way for instance) as well as dump into the pyramid top bin and the lowest scoring hole it could look something like this:

Dump two discs in the lowest hole during autonomous, go back and reload with 4 colored discs. Climb the pyramid and dump those discs. Climb back down and hand reload with 4 white discs. Drive to the other side, dump those white discs. Drive back and hand reload the last two colored discs and climb the pyramid and dump them. Match ends. That adds up like this:

6 points (auto from behind the line)
20 points (4 colored)
4 points (4 white)
10 points (2 colored)
30 points (pyramid at the end)

That's a total of 70 points and seems like a reasonable amount of time for each task assuming you have a good climbing mechanism. Even if you have to let other robots in your alliance handle the colored discs, making three runs down field for 12 pts + the 30 pt climb and the 6 pt auto makes for 48 points scored by a single robot.

This would make for a very solid robot that had only three subsystems - drive, dump, and climb. No need to pick discs from the ground and flip them over if needed. No need to have a power-hungry and physically large shooter. In fact, this design could make for a quite small and light robot; which in turn makes climbing easier.

Anyways, just food for thought.

-Mike