[Rman1923]

In my mind, there isn't anything to regret when you fail during the season. It's all a lesson. For instance, our 2014 season, not gonna lie, was crap. The manipulator (Four marshmallow wheel shooter) was actually really good and the standard 6 tread traction wheel drive was fine, but the combo of both was deadly (for us). We actually did amazing in our first competition (Mt. Olive District) or for at least the first day. because we had a drop in our DT, every time we angled our shooter with the piston, the whole robot rocked back and forth. This is fine when we were stationary and shooting, because we'd wait for the rocking to stop and then shoot when ready, but during day 2, teams figured out that we can't play at all against defense or shoot while driving. So we got stuffed the second day and we learned a lot. The main problem of the season though, was we didn't know when to stop modifying. we changed the intake so it could intake faster and at wider angles, which ended up not working. we also made several small adjustments so that we could try to shoot and drive, but they were sorta unreliable and I can't honestly say they worked well. At the end of our season we had a bot with several things added to it and kinda rachet honestly and it didn't work too well. So for the 2015 season we designed a new ten-wheel drive (during off-season) that stayed flat so there was no possibility of rocking. We also agreed we wouldn't use drive-in-a-day (it showed up week three last build season) and that we would exclusively use VEX and versaFrame. So we fixed the rachetness issues as well as the drive train issues. We also built a more robust robot that wouldn't need too many fixes or mods from the get go. The major thing we did was change team culture and rules so that modifications had to be reviewed by both the mentors and students before they could go on. All of this contributed to the success of this season. We wouldn't have made SF in TVR or Mt. Olive and we wouldn't have been QF in MARCMP and North Brunswick had it not been for this overhaul. And we keep learning through the season. in the beginning we could maybe do some 5 stacks on the platform. But by the end of comp season (including IRI) we were able to do three stacks of six with noodled cans even after Can-burgling (third fastest in the world).

TL;DR: My main point is that regrets in robotics are your curriculum. They are they way teams get better and no team hasn't messed up before. Without these teaching moments, I honestly can't say that we would've been this successful and I honestly can't say I would've had so much fun building the robot. These regrets teach you to out-smart challenges and engineer something better.