Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Lim
I will throw this one out there to all the Canadian FIRST historians...
The most dominant robot of 2004 was...
1241
No exaggeration. Rookie year. Best robot in the world in 2004.
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I contemplated posting this as well. It was between 1241 and 33 for the best 2004 bot, in my opinion. But I am also of the opinion that there wasn't really any truly "dominant" bot in 2004.
The same thing can be applied, to an even larger degree, to 2005 onwards. "Dominance" in the 3v3 era means something completely different than it did in prior eras of FRC. No team can dominate a game the same way that 71 did in 1997 or 60 and 71 did in 2002. It's become "dominance" through plurality. More robots on the field, often sharing the same scarce resources, has led to the demise of true dominance. In many respects, it's because of the increase in parity. Mid-level teams are now competing at a much higher level than they used to, and the number of powerhouses has grown substantially.
The only teams from the 3v3 era that enter the discussion as "dominant," in my opinion, are 1114 in 2008 and 469 in 2010. 469 was dominant in the same fashion that 71 was dominant in 2001. They still needed good partners to compete at 100%, but they did a rare function better than anyone else (and were still plenty good at a number of other things). They were, by far, the best "X factor" in that game. 1114 in 2013 may prove to be similar by the end of Championship.
1114 in 2008 was a much more old school dominant. They were simply better than everyone else. It was 47 in 2000-style dominance. Not a chokehold by any means, but very very difficult to outplay. The game mechanics worked against them, though. Their hybrid scoring was easily the best in FRC, but there were only two trackballs to remove from the rack. After knocking those two off, there was diminishing returns for the rest of autonomous scoring for the alliance (as laps weren't worth as much and their alliance partners couldn't knock off any more trackballs). The game mechanics inhibited them from taking an even bigger lead out of hybrid, something that enabled the other alliance to have a chance against them.