[logank013]

I honestly have no idea how rookie all start works but I can talk about the robot side of it. In Indiana this past year, we had 3 rookie teams. All 3 made it to Indiana District Championships. Then, we sent 2 rookies to Worlds. Those 3 teams were actually some of the best three teams in Indiana. Now I'm not sure if it was intended to be this way but whether it was intended or not, what happened was a good idea. By the time we hit IN champs in week 6, 5402 and 5484 looked a lot like our team and other successful internal ramps across the nation. 5403 looked a lot like 1024. With 234 and 1024 arguably being the best pair in IN, it makes sense to try to form your team after other successful teams. I know our team this year in our 17th season, looked at robots in week 1 and 2 to see how other successful teams were doing. We actually saw how successful some teams with internal ramps were doing and we thought we'd give it a try. So for week 3, we added a ramp and ended up winning at Kokomo. Thoughout the season, we found some defects in the ramp idea and added other parts to make the ramp work a little better. At the end of it all, we ranked third in Archimededs. So what I'm basically trying to say is, look at what other teams are doing during weeks that you aren't at a competition. A lot of very successful teams look at the top teams, look at what their team is capable of, and see what on they can improve. Don't worry about having the best bot right out of week 1. Most of the best teams win worlds because they make their robot barely resemble what it was in week 1. The biggest most important thing on building a robot is make modifications and constantly try to make it better. I know I saw some really successful teams in week 1 be really bad in week 6 because their week 1 robot looked the same in week 6. I hope this was helpful. Thanks for reading.