Quote:
Originally Posted by CloakAndDagger
Reading through this thread, I would say that our robot perfectly fits this bill. We made the trade off of crossing defenses and quick low goals for shooting and hanging, but sacrificed high goal shooting. Although it was effective (we qualified and advanced through michigan state finals, and finished as an 8th alliance captain at worlds), we are hoping to have a high goal shooter operational by our first offseason competition.
Although clearly effective, it does show that we need to push ourselves. I feel like that as a team as old as ours, we should be able to accomplish more than the minimum level of competitiveness, consistently, no matter how many seniors we lose, or any other circumstances that fall on us
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CloakAndDagger:
Our goal at the beginning of the season was to qualify for MSC and we felt we could do that with our team resources (mentors, students, time, money) by building a very competitive MCC robot and were not disappointed [Team 1114 presentation makes this point about carefully evaluating your resources]
FRC3548, RoboRavens2, built a MCC robot that successfully became #3 captain at SOuthfield and then selected by #1 captain, 3604, to win the event with our sister team, FRC1188, who also built a MCC robot.
At our second FiM event at Livonia, after a few rounds of alliance captain picking each other, we found ourselves as captain of alliance#8. Our sister team, 1188, chose us as their first pick.
From this perspective I think the students considered our season very successful especially after we qualified for MSC and the World Championship at St. Louis.
One of the major things different this year was how much the KOP chassi had to change in order to be an effective MCC robot (our view). What normally takes us only two weeks to complete took us four weeks this year. Modifications to the KOP chassis included the pneumatic upgrade kit from AM, the AM front wedge plate, VEX Pro 13t CIM gear, 50 tooth trans gear swap, and new belts to go with the VEX 60T belt pulleys. We needed to resize our KOP by reducing it by one inch in order to accommodate the belt and pulleys.
As an experienced coach I know that our 10 student member team will peak at about 500 hours in the six week build period. As such, not having a shooter to reuse "off the shelf" or a climber "off the shelf" made those two items very low on the wish list. We are considering those off season projects at the present time.
One the great things about successfully competing and successfully completing a MCC robot is that the team is not stretched to its absolute limits the whole season long. This allows the coaches, students and mentors to smile and enjoy the entire season a whole lot more. This is an important element in retaining and attracting students, mentors and coaches for the next year.