[Danny Diaz]

Your discussion kinda reminds me of our scouting session in Arkansas. Arkansas had about 39 teams, and about 16-17 of them were what we'd call "tier 1" or "tier 2" robots - robots that could do everything, or almost everything, at least in a vacuum. So then we looked for "tier 3" robots - robots that maybe couldn't do everything, but robots that could do ONE THING INCREDIBLY WELL. There were some bots who could "always" score in the lower goal, but often times they seemed to drive around in patterns that showed they had no real purpose in life. We take match footage of each competition round (at 10fps, and playback at 40fps so we get a fast-forward effect) so we can look after-the-fact for robots that really "stand out" on things we initially weren't looking for during competition. There was one robot that stood out - team 2999. They had some crazy wire mesh above their robot to possibly hold a ball for autonomous, but otherwise they were just a chassis-bot. But what they did with that chassis was spectacular. In every round they played, they played with defensive purpose - disrupting assists, being an effective blocker to always seem to be between an opposing robot and the ball they want to grab, and always being that "gnat" that you keep swatting but keeps coming back right into your face. If there are no Tier 1 and Tier 2 robots available, THAT is the kind of robot you can't afford to not pick. Unfortunately someone else picked them ahead of us, but THAT is what we really look for.

-Danny