Quote:
Originally Posted by Irwin772
To clarify what 1114 did with 900, 900 built a kitbot chassis on Friday in order to have a light enough robot to be cheescaked, this obviously made them a viable pick despite their low ranking in the subdivision. This had more to do with 900 making a decision that paid off for them than 1114 and 148 asking them to do something they may not have planned on.
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Which further emphasizes the point made by grstex regarding teams looking at their ranking and "cutting bait" as he puts it.
But as others have pointed out, a lot of the problems here stem from the nature of Recycle Rush. It's a game where 2 top-tier robots can score almost all of the totes by themselves and don't need a third robot, and where it is incredibly easy to bolt on incredibly important and impressive add ons to an otherwise average robot and take that robot from average to "the best" at something (either a canburglar or ramps for the feeder station, your choice).
In 2014 you couldn't bolt on a manipulator to handle the ball. In 2013 you couldn't bolt on a shooter. You could bolt on a 10-point hang device, but that wasn't as important as the canburglars this year. And the same can be said for 2012 with regards to shooters (not possible) vs. a "stinger" (possible, but not critical). The last time we've had something where it was relatively easy to bolt on an extra device was 2011 with minibots, another year that had diminishing returns in scoring and the top-tier teams could do all of the "worthwhile" scoring. And that was/is one of the biggest complaints for that year. Matches were decided before they started based on the minibots.
I am hoping that FIRST realizes this when designing games in the future and stays away from these problems.