Quote:
Originally Posted by Wayne TenBrink
Although many teams over-reach technically and would do better with less, it is still good to reach a bit beyond your comfort zone. A functioning, "simple" machine is best at early events where it is playing against non-functioning "complex" machines that haven't reached their full potential. They will eventually reach a plateau and struggle to remain competitive. I think a team should understand their technical limitation and design within them, but you should always strive to be competitive against the "great" teams, not the pack.
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I like bits and pieces of both the original conclusions and this statement. I agree that teams should reach a bit outside their comfort zone (only those willing to fail will ever have great success), but to the original posts point, I think many reach WAY too far outside their capabilities. And it is also incredibly important for teams to decide what their goal is...
Are you building:
1. A Robot within your means
2. A Robot that can do everything
3. A Robot designed to win Matches
4. A Robot designed to win Regionals
5. A Robot designed to win Championships
Arguably these five points can be very different robots, and can be very different for each team. And in reality there are probably between 3 & 10 teams out of thousands that can do all five. I think the data presented shows us that very well. Each team needs to do an analysis of the numbers, the ways to score, and what they think they are capable of, and then figure out how to match that to what they want to do.
And another point that has been discussed before but I've only seen hinted at here, is that a HUGE factor in any of the "winning" strategies is driver time. Even an average robot with great drivers who have lots of practice and good strategy can very easily seed high and win events.