Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris is me
Intake is dramatically more important than high goal. High goal without intake shouldn't even be in the discussion of possibilities.
Any ball that ever makes it on the floor in any way needs to be returned to alliance control as fast as possible. There will be situations where a defender may disrupt a pass or dislodge a ball and the inbounder is the robot free to retrieve the ball. I would not consider picking an inbounder without an intake if one with an intake was still available.
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This, all of this.
Basically, if you're trying to build or become the 'best inbounder possible' you're essentially saying that you're going to be the alliances third (or fourth) robot. In this year, but also previous, the 3rd robot, or inbounder usually plays the 'tactical role' more so that either of the first two machines. The tactical role is the one where your robot will do anything and/or everything required to complete the overall strategic objectives, regardless of they're the objectives decided 10 minutes before the match, or ten seconds into it.
Just playing with scenarios here, but hypothetically, a third robot could, in theory, be the team responsible for cleaning up after autonomous - especially if you're paired with two big names that are going to draw an onslaught of defense the second tele-op starts. In this case, you absolutely want an intake, especially when you're moving the ball more than a few feet.
There are also scenarios where you may inbound to the trussing robot, who fires to the scoring robot, and the scoring robot is being defended and kept away from the ball. In this instance, it could also make sense for you to go retrieve the ball and either get it into the scoring robot, or get it into a goal, but either way, you'd want to be able to get it into your robot and where ever it needs to go.
Also, something specific to inbounders, but the ability to do 'pass through' inbounding is really, really handy. 'Pass through' inbounding is when a ball is dropped into your robot, and it essentially rolls through and into your partner without really needing to do much other than maybe reversing your intake. Do this a couple of times per match and you'll see that the time adds up to big savings.