[cglrcng]

I did not work this year on mentoring during the robot build period. (I put myself on a different project). As a legacy team, looking at on my own, what makes the elite teams (both legacy and newer), win so bloody often. And researching that, and parsing the game rules, and the progression of changes throughout the season.

I will impart a bit of knowledge though. My team received a shoutout from "I'm Looking Forward" before the East AZ Regional (our first event), that went something like this..."The originators and 1st adopters of WCD Team 60, finally go mecanum." (I did not go back and copy the quote, close enough though). We were a no change from WCD team recent and past years, though we did go from chains finally to belts last year. This year, our first at mecanum...Who knows what the future holds...

I have witnessed the following over the last few years (including my own child who is now almost finished his first year of college), for 3 years at least, the core robot designing and building students have wanted to try mecanum, but never actually tried it off season, though they always stated they wanted to REPEATEDLY. They just never did the work without mentor prodding. They mainly talked about it...A LOT! (I mean constantly).

So, the mentor input at design/build time was always....You have not tested, don't risk it now, and pushing power (except locking wheels in X), is not what you like to do in the defensive pushing necessary games. So they did not go there....Don't fix what isn't actually broke kind of a thing. They didn't make the change year after year.

Then along comes "Recycle rush" (No Bumpers are necessary, no pushing or bashing (the competition at least)....And, the perfect game for fine sweet mecanum wheeled driving, strafing, turning in tight quarters, etc., except on and around those more difficult slick scoring platforms at least, is going to be better they think, and finer much slower deliberate smoother driving control is really good in the game around stacks and those platforms, HP Stations (Tote Chute!), over much faster ultra-feet per second in previous years, and that Landfill....Yeah that too.....Then, mecanum is so widely adopted by early adopters, that coding libriaries have been fully released by now, thanks to great teams that have much more experience using it by now, so switching now is absolute right timing, even if during design/build season w/ no off season work/testing).

So, the students finally won the design battle this year (even without off season testing), as there were no real CONS to mention anymore. They got up and running early, and it drives straight w/ just a little code tinkering making it fully their own.

Their design and late adoption has worked so far....2 events, 2 Finalist Awards in 2 competition weeks (not to mention 2 Engineering Awards among others, including "The BIG ONE" EI, that comes w/ huge perks! And all done w/ an all brandy new robot driver team (though both drivers were, from what I understand prior extreme gamers too, and have driven our practice bots many times, at many team functions, both on/off season. Just their first year for both actually behind the glass, and our HP is a carry over from the 2 previous years, he's just matured a bit as it normally goes, and he get's even better every match he's behind the glass too).

The big switches that can be made in original competition robot drivetrain choices can hurt or help your team, and those can be/are HUGE TEAM DECISIONS. It can and will make or break your competition year.

So far for us, it was an easy choice w/ better results, and fairly smooth sailing, currently sitting 51st in OPR w/ a couple weeks to go after facing very top end competition....But, it could have easily been a choice plunging the whole Team the other way (we just have the right drivers for the job too)....They weighed the risks together, and reap the rewards, and shine together.
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How & IF you get that job done, needs to be discussed as a team together...Or not. Each team and how they accomplish things is left solely up to the individual teams. (Press the box, stress the box, climb outside the box, climb back into the box and look out...Just don't tear up and dispose of the box...You might find you just need that box someday...Or a part of it at least!)
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Good luck to you on any and all resolutions in that regard. I can only share what worked for our team. (I was never a part of that discussion this year). Or in the past actually...I only witnessed it from afar. So far, I really like our results. So Far...Plenty left to go....