Quote:
Originally Posted by cadandcookies
I respectfully disagree with your respectful disagreement. There's a distinction between building to play multiple roles and designing a "multitool" robot. This year, for example, a relatively simple robot with a roller intake and a surgical tubing catapult was able to play a large portion of roles in the game.
There is a huge difference between a mechanically complex robot and a strategically-- most teams can't pull off a mechanically complex robot well, but the more you can do with a simple mechanism the better off you are. True flexibility is something I think is often undervalued, and even less achieved.
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Nah, I'll respectfully agree with both you at the same time...
pabeekm is correct that focus on building a mechanically simple robot that excels at one role is a key to success. Assuming you can properly identify a need that you can excel at. For example: this year your average 4xxx team was not going to excel at scoring compared to top teams at the event. [Cue the plethora of NUH UH TEAM 4YYY WAS THE TOP SCORING TEAM AT THEIR EVENT that I really don't care about so save me the hassle of ignoring you] but the inbounding/trussing roles were pretty open. And what's more, they both required similar systems (notably, an intake) ...
In this case (and in ones similar to it) cadandcookies is correct. Identifying key mechanisms that can enable you to play multiple roles and focusing on them being reliable and effective is important. Many games have mechanisms like that. Usually they involve active control of game pieces. Focus on minimizing driver line up and timing. Big wide rollers work wonders, forklifts suck. [Cue the plethora of NUH UH TEAM ZZZZ WAS THE TOP SCORING TEAM AT THEIR EVENT AND THEY HAD A FORKLIFT that I really don't care about so save me the hassle of ignoring you AGAIN]. I'll leave the exercise of finding these mechanisms over the years to you, but I'll give you a hint: It's
almost always involved in possessing the game piece. (I also don't care about the counterexamples someone is going to try to prove me wrong with).
Want the TL;DR of it? Keep it simple, effective, and easy to use.