Here's one data point for this clone debate: In 2014, team 1477 worked on a design that would have converted the robot into a "254 clone". Building that design was well within their capabilities, but the team decided not to use it, considering that the existing robot wasn't
too bad and it would be a lot of effort for something that wasn't guaranteed to work. Just like Cory and Adam said:
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Originally Posted by Cory
A team that would wait until week 2 of regionals and copy a robot like 1114 isn't going to be good enough to actually get the details right.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamHeard
It's not realistic for most teams, but it is possible for some teams currently (with high resources).
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1477 is a pretty high resource team, relatively speaking. Not quite on the level of 254/118/148/1114 right now, but well above average. The students took their design for the 254 clone and turned it into an offseason project. Turns out, cloning a 254 robot is pretty hard, and it was really buggy because of small details.
I don't think successful cloned robots can be made in the 3-4 weeks between reveals and late competitions. It takes too much testing and iteration to make a top-tier robot (see 1477 in 2013 with 3 regional losses before winning one and then Champs).