Quote:
Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb)
I'm not sure if this really was the worst year for specialized robots. Conveyor belt robots like 1987 works awesome with pure cappers and specialized can grabbers could make or break on Einstein. That being said, the specializations this year were much harder than in any previous years but if pulled off right could have a huge impact in competition. We decided with about 2-3 weeks before champs to switch to being a container specialist and actually had some really great results. I think if we had decided sooner to be a can specialist or if we didn't break in our second quarterfinal, our division results would have been different but even with what we had, we did incredibly well as a support robot. Just depends on what you decide to specialize in and the execution. Some specializations also work better in the regional level vs championship level and vice versa.
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I don't mean to say that teams that specialized were doomed to be unsuccessful, simply that teams that were able to stack and cap independently reached much greater success in the "Quest for Einstein." My team was finalist and semifinalist at our regionals. Many teams that specialized were unable to gain much ground at worlds though, especially as the teams that could work interdependently made it difficult for these teams to rank highly. However, a perfect example of specialized teams working together extremely well was 1983's alliance at Chezy Champs. Specialized robots this year in order to succeed to their maximum capacity needed to work with robots that were specialized towards other gamepieces e.g. 2 tote robots and a can robot.
Past years specialized robots were much more easily able to contribute to an alliance of teams that weren't specialized. Perfect examples would be 2013 1519 as a full court shooter, or 2012 with 4334. These robots were able to find a niche that would fit with most alliances that year, however this year there was much less of a niche as teams that could score alone were unable to be assisted in an efficient manner by specialized teams. Almost every previous year the winner, finalist, or semifinalist alliance had a specialized robot with them.
TL;DR - It wasn't impossible for specialized teams to gain success this year, just much more difficult than in most past years.