Quote:
Originally Posted by Donut
We took note of that and built a simple low scoring lap bot in 2008, and until last year that is the robot that broke down the least of any I've worked on in the last 10 years.
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Historically, 1551 has been inconsistent with our ability to score, but since our third year we've always built the absolute best, no-holds-barred drive train we possibly can. There have been years where we've been relegated to defense only because of our own inability to score (or we just couldn't score fast enough, or reliably enough)--and most of those years we made the elimination tournament.
Defense should have been huge last year; I watched so many streamed matches where I was frustrated by teams that couldn't score well enough to change the outcome, who didn't play defense instead, where that could have made the difference in the match.
Defense should be monstrously huge this year, but probably won't be as big as it should be for some teams/alliances.
The things that teams can do to avoid any sort of ill will whatsoever are pretty simple:
1. Be brutally honest with yourselves and your alliance partners about your capabilities--not what you hoped/planned to be able to do, not what you think you might be able to do because of what you changed after last match, but what you know you can do reliably.
2. Use those capabilities to determine your strategy for a match.
3. Play that strategy to the best of your abilities.
4. Play every match to win.
A brick on wheels is usually a defense-only robot, but this year that's simply not true. If you can ram a ball in a given direction, you can assist and you can score in the low goal.