Quote:
Originally Posted by uggmun
This is exactly how I feel now. My friend and I came up with a conveyor-belt loader and slingshot design that worked in our mockups, but our robot this year is going to be a knockoff of the Boom Done and Andymark designs. I'd much rather have a student design that works poorly than a carbon copy that performs magnificently.
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Then it seems like you have prioritized original design over competitive success, and that's fine. However, that means the BuildBlitz/Ri3d projects aren't for you. You don't have to watch them, but it seems like the rest of your team picked simple, elegant, and competitive.
I think these projects are great, as has been said a million times before - to help bring up the level of play for teams. Having been a student captain on a rookie team when there weren't projects like this, I can tell you right now we'd have been much more competitive, much earlier in our time as a team if we'd had things to base off of. Instead, it took us 3 years of being that laughable, non-performing, bottom-ranked robot to finally get close-up enough with other teams to get a better idea of how the good teams design & build. It wasn't inspirational at all. In fact, 1923 almost didn't get to continue beyond year 2 because of how poorly we were doing.
I'd much rather see Build Blitz/Ri3d copies than a field full of rookie boxbots that can't accomplish anything. The strong teams will still stand out, and the less-than-strong teams will get the leg up that they need.
If you disagree, then it's your choice not to watch the streams, and it's your choice to build something different. However, you don't need to campaign to take away an opportunity from other parts of the community that might want to use it.