[Max Boord]

I think they are too. Our team started with a vacuum pickup mechanism. We got soo far that it was installed on the practice robot before we realized it didn’t work in any way shape of form. We quickly decided to switch to el toros after seeing how well they worked even in comparison to the jvn top roller concept.

As for rookie teams it is huge. At the 2013 champs we were paired with several Ri3D bots which allowed us to quickly develop a game plan knowing there exact capabilities.
This year with 5 Ri3D bots i see 2 roads:
The rookie : improve slightly but mostly copy these championship worthy robots.
The veteran : use Ri3d as a prototyping done for you. This was our approach as the pickup we had on just did not work and we were way too late in realizing this to prototype a new intake.

Ri3D also helps with concept development. To quickly see that a pneumatic puncher does not work allowed us to totally throw out that concept on day 1. The same is true with spatula pickup and slingshots.

Scouting: our pit scouting sheet will simply have a list of the mechanisms on each Ri3d robot (and a blank to write down mechanisms not used on a Ri3d) making scouting much simpler.