[FTC5110]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I would love to hear the perspectives of FTC and VRC teams on this line of thought. They have an even larger competition window and much more affordable robots, making strategies like this even more feasible.

Originally Posted by Karthik

This is very common in VRC. By the time we get to VEX Worlds in April, design convergence has usually set in, with 2-3 designs that have been extensively cloned/copied. Some teams really like this, others really don't.

In VRC it becomes very difficult for teams to design something unique and innovative yet still remain competitive because of the design convergence. Although it's fun seeing a design so good teams attempt to duplicate (sometime almost screw for screw) the downside is having them on the other side of the field and your team loses the match. The single worst part is knowing you'll probably do worse arriving at a competition with something innovative versus just following the convergence crowd.

FTC is a different story because materials are less constrained giving teams more scope to build innovative robots that can't easily be copied without someone doing all the engineering again. You can actually make something different and win. Design concepts do converge somewhat by the FTC world championship but implementation is always different and this often determines match outcomes.

Time limits? Our team participates in both VRC and FTC with the later usually constrained to about 8 weeks of actual build work followed by perhaps 4 weeks of fine tuning. Wouldn't want the season any longer to be honest. VRC being a full 12 month season actually gets boring and we usually have a little fun in the first few months then just sit back and observe trying hard to figure out something innovative that will be a match for the convergence crowd.