[artK]

The third (and fourth) bot is extremely important to doing well at champs. Consider the third robots of the past few years championship alliances. Getting the best alliance partners requires a great combination of an amazing robot, strong scouting, a generous schedule, and some teams to fall deep into the draft. Teams like 2848, 610, 16, 973, 177, 971, 148, 987*, who normally go deep (or win) at the most competitive regionals, were the second picks on these alliances. Even the fourth bots this year were all exceptional robots (5136 and 3467 were among my favorite machines that year, and those four backup robots won three events, a couple of district champion finals appearances).

The one catch for trying to build a good third robot is that what it contributes to the alliance can be difficult to see year to year, especially when doing initial strategic analysis. I could write in extreme detail what third bots did, but in general, the best third robots specialized in something other than the primary scoring function.



*I am not sure what the draft order was when they won champs, but it was from the 8th seed, and 177 is already on the list.