[Boltman]

I think you need several strong students (you and your friends ) and several strong mentors in different roles to really get a team focused on being competitive.

It sounds to me like there is a lack of enough people in key roles to drive the competitiveness you seek.

Any way in your area to recruit more mentors in key aspects of a robot season? Then students can choose what area to focus on that they enjoy.

Not everyone likes reading rules..that is OK as long as some group does then filters it down to the drive team and constantly monitors the builders to not get sloppy with constraints. Try to establish different groups led by a strong mentor of each area you need focus on

For us a fairly small and lower resource team we break it down into the following groups with roughly 20 dedicated students and 6-7 mentors :

CAD
Programming
Builders
Strategy/Scouts/Rules
Outreach/Publicity/Team Image/Photography

I'm sure its harder in your area to find enough people. We have a lot of tech and industry in our area BUT we are really small compared to many established teams in the area with all year classes or 80 students . What makes us "go" is the laser sharp focus and passion of each group.

For instance I developed the scouting department last year "from scratch" Why? Because we needed that edge.(expanding the role of the strategy department) that was good for several wins each event by making our drive team perform better and build a customized to our traits elimination alliances. It made a huge difference in how the entire team performed. Us as #8 took down #1 in 2 games, #3 rank in CV. Semis in Ventura last year only losing to 330/1717 by six points (one scoring play)

My scouts LOVE IT they now scout better than I do. Its about finding the passion and aligning both mentors and students in areas THEY ENJOY and have a passion for.

You can do it. These powerhouses of which we in CA have are some of the best in the world, they may have seemingly unlimited resources and have companies donate facilities to fabricate parts off their designs out of carbon fiber or whatever. That's ok you don't need that to be competitive. Being able to know you enter the competition with a fairly high chance to win it regardless who is entered in it tends to breed the next season of passion to iterate a better entry. This is not rocket science. Durability, efficiency, drive train wins games.

You don't have to do it alone...you get two other bots to help you. Just make sure you are a solid partner, We view powerhouse laced events as an opportunity to get better elimination alliance partners. We try to maximize any event we enter by being high enough rank to build a plausible elimination winning alliance.

Every year we learn critical lessons...every year we build a better bot most any higher alliance would want as a partner. Conversely we are very picky about the partners we choose they have to maximize our alliance potential and we know that through scouting.

You just need focus.We started from scratch three years ago and ONE person with any previous robot experience. We had absolutely no clue what we were doing the first year. A surprise trip to the worlds that year showed us the way forward. KISS.

Engineering| Programming| Driving| Scouting
....all are super critical.

Feel free to PM me anytime if you need any strategy or scouting tips. That is my focus for our team. I believe we scout better than most teams by keeping it simple and cutting out the "noise" try to be efficient in EVERYTHING you do. Its all about cycle times and max points. Its critical for your team to feel successful to be successful..and competitive.

Don't underestimate the value of tennis balls duct taped on (perfect height for LG) we do ghetto if it works.