[Adam Freeman]

I wouldn't say that there was any one specific "best" strategy for this season, for either overall game play and/or climbing.

Outside of the Einstein winning strategy, there were a number of very successful strategies that could have been just as successful given slightly different circumstances. Cycling, FCS, Floor pickup, Corner climbing, Side climbing, etc... were all in play leading into and up to Einstein.

Specifically to corner climbing for us....we decided to persue this type of climbing to allow for room for an additional climber. It was also the first method of climbing that we were able to meet (barely) the original 54" cylinder rule. We not a fan of swinging while climbing, and didn't really have time/resources to proto-type any other methods of climbing. We didn't even prototype our corner climber method....we were all or nothing on getting it to work or fail trying.

By going after this method of climbing and the design we chose, it significantly impacted our ability to floor load. We tried to pursue a flip down floor loader for a while, but were unable to meet all the packaging requirements to do both.

Climbing the pyramid for 30pts was our #1 design priority. We significantly under-estimated the # of discs that could be scored, either through FCS or cycling. The ease at which good teams scored discs really de-valued the importance of climbing. Combine that with the importance of autonomous as a tie-breaker, and I would say that our design priorities were really out of whack this year.

But, even with that being said there was a place for climbing in this game. 254 and 1986 showed it was possible to do while still pulling off multi-disc autos and 1114 showed it was possible to overcome the auto disadvantage by cycling 3/4 times and climbing+dumping quickly.

IMO - Being able to score discs + Climbing and/or dumping = Inspiration.

In the end, we may have had more success going a different route....but, I think getting the climber working and seeing it corner climbing+dumping at the end of the division finals was one of the coolest ways to lose an FRC event.