Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris is me
Second - if you throw 5 weeks into a 30 point hanger because "team X will do a 30 point hang AND shoot frisbees", and you don't use it, that's hundreds of man-hours you could have put into your shooter, your intake, or into drive practice in order to get your scoring rate up at or above their level! The jack of all trades really is the master of none for this game more than many others. And if 1625 matches you frisbee for frisbee and can 30 point hang: assemble a better alliance and the match is still in question. Three specialized robots will often beat one multi-function robot and two supporters.
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This is a good post, and I have pondered it off and on during the past day.
One thing I'd like to add is that we try to evaluate our own abilities as we choose our strategy. We are aiming for something that does more than a minimum competitive concept, but not necessarily everything - we believe we are capable of that. We want to design a robot that can win the regional, rather than getting into elimination rounds as a middle alliance member and then facing long odds against the #1 alliance. If you're trying to win, I think you need to make your best educated guesses about what the competition is going to bring and design accordingly. With that in mind, I think it would be great to quickly finish a bot that shoots, human loads, and does a 10 point hang. But I don't think that is enough to actually win the competition, so I think we need at least one more ability on top of that.
I am still not certain that we are capable of a 30 point hanger, but our progress seems promising enough to continue pursuing it, because the payoff is pretty substantial. We aren't putting all of our eggs in that basket - we are developing a more frisbee oriented robot design as well. Adding a 10 point hanger as a substitute will not be very difficult if we decide to go that route. Splitting our resources isn't ideal, and deciding which route to take will be something we constantly evaluate in this segment of the season.
I'll say this much - this year's game is forcing some really tough choices. I completely agree that it doesn't make sense to try to do everything.
Edit: One other thing I was going to mention - Yeah, I do have a healthy amount of fear that spending too much time on a climber and then having to scrap it will result in a rough season. It's a risk vs reward thing that keeps me awake at night.