[EricH]

Originally Posted by Ty Tremblay

A drivetrain won't win you an event, what you mount on top will.

Ty, would you consider PVC, speed drive, or filecards to be more important for the Beatty BEAST of '02? And I'm sure Element '06 and Element '07 would disagree--winning a regional from the last pick with nothing but a drivetrain (and good partners/defense ability) kind of puts a hole there...


That being said, a drivetrain by itself won't win an event, but a bad drivetrain will lose you that event. The three most important elements of a robot are drivetrain, drivetrain, and drivetrain (Mr. Bill Beatty, in paraphrase). However, I would consider rapid acquisition of game objects to be a close fourth--and if you can acquire them, you can presumably remove them from your robot.

tl;dr: A good robot--which is a combination of a good drivetrain, a good manipulator system ("on top of" the drivetrain), a good drive team, and a good strategy--is essential to winning an event, but different teams' mixtures of those four elements can all win.