1.
Is this common in FIRST?
Its totally event dependent. you wont show up to Waterloo or Orlando finding too many toasters. In contrast, I remember watching the western Canadian regional a few years ago and finding a large portion of robots that could not handle the game piece.
2.
Is this common in Aerial Assist?
Yes. this years game piece is more inconsistent, bigger, fragile and contested for than almost any other game piece in recent FRC history making it much harder to be an effective scoring robot on the field.
3.
What is the build season like for teams who end up with a robot that just doesn't play the game well.
It all depends on when this is realized.
A. IF REALIZED EARLY:
Smart teams will change there design to fix the problem. Bad teams will just tell the drive team to deal with it.
B. IF REALIZED LATE:
Good teams will try to build a new system that they can switch out at there event or right before stop build day. Bad teams will just ignore/ deny the situation by lowering there standards for what is an acceptable robot.
C. IF THE TEAM HAS LIMITED RESOURCES:
Good teams will attempt to use programming/ strategy/ driver skill to compensate for unacceptable or inferior hardware.
4.
What causes teams to be bad?
Usually a lack of resources or a failure in the design and planning process. If you take 1 thing away from your pre rookie experience it should be think before you act. Try to pull designs or design ideas form past games that used a similar game piece or field layout. A prime example is 67 (hot) and 971 (Spartan Robotics). They both evolved the 2008 world champs robot to make it work in this years game and preform better. 67 is currently 49-7 and 971 is 35-0. I highly suggest looking at some of karthik kanagasabapathy's recorded presentations on how to preform effective strategic analysis of a game and how to design an effective robot to play it.
Here are some recources:
2014 HOT tech notes by Adam Freeman:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2973?
2012 HOT tech notes by Adam Freeman:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2649?
Karthik Kanagasabapathy's 2013 show on design and strategy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smWy7FQ8jLE
Karthik Kanagasabapathy's 2011 show on design and strategy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apk_X-maRf8
A CD thread on the weakest/ simplest robot that could make eliminations in 2013:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...=116732&page=2