[Lil' Lavery]

We removed the capability to fit underneath the low bar from our machine for our final three matches at Championship, in favor of a 53.875" high shot blocker. In that sense, the answer might be "no."

However, for the strategy we selected, I do feel it was worth it. In our first couple meetings, we pegged down that we wanted to play for the bonus ranking points. We play in the district system, and your qualification standings are a big factor in your district points. Getting into the top 8 is essentially a double pay-off, since you not only get points for your seeding, but also guarantee yourself alliance captain points. Based on this, we established that we wanted to virtually guarantee breaches and help as much as we could towards a capture. Based on this, we determined that crossing categories A, B, and D were absolute requirements, and we would design in the capability to either cross under the low bar or open category C. Ultimately, we ended up with a low bar capable machine.

Part of the reason we selected the low bar was for autonomous. It was the only defense we absolutely knew the position of. Further still, it required no active manipulation to pass. Based on this, we determined it would give us the best odds of completing an autonomous low goal. While we did eventually end up scoring from position 4 (Ramparts) as well, that assumption did prove correct, as the low bar routine was our most consistent autonomous in terms of scoring (albeit, still far from 100%).

Ultimately, I think our strategy paid off. Although some early season technical issues almost prevented us from reaching DCMP (which is something we feel we should accomplish every season), we eventually accrued enough points to earn one of MAR's point spots in St. Louis. Our seeding actually improved at each of our four events, to the point where we seeded 8th and captained the 6th alliance on Hopper. We can't quite boast the gaudy 7 or 8 low goals per match of some of the elite low goal machines, but we were very consistent at 5 goals/match at Championship (a couple times 6), and did so while crossing a variety of defenses to ensure breaches, rather than cycling over one. If we had more practice cycling across the low bar, we may have been able to put up a higher max score (although having to both articulate our intake and turn around to cycle would have slowed us some). Being able to consistently score 50% of the capture balls and complete breaches proved to be a massive aid in seeding high at both DCMP and CMP, and we ended up as alliance captains at both.

Had we been from a regional structure, our strategy decision may have landed elsewhere. Another one of the roles we considered was a "sweeper" that attempted to stay forwards and score boulders in the high goal. If we didn't care as much about qualifications rankings, we may have selected this (though, one of our reasons for shying away from this is we didn't feel we could build as reliable a sweeper machine as top tier teams).