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Ken,
I thought about addressing this when you made your other post in this thread, but never made the time for it.
Each year, there are many ways to play the game. Last year, you could stack, or you could play for the top of the ramp. The year before, you could grab, move, and steal goals, or you could do balls. Each year has had a break down like that. These past two years, the scoring has been biased toward having a powerful robot, but I don't believe that was intentional.
Last year, team 67 had one of the best stackers, and they also had a swerve drive which helped them immensely. Looking back, we (73) really could have benefited from a swerve also.
in 2002, the kiwi drive was used on a ball collecting robot. I never saw their full robot in action, but I can guess that they paid little to no attention to the goals. Did they win any competitions? No. But they did build an awesome robot.
Most teams find out the game, then choose a strategy, then build a robot to meet that strategy. However, other teams choose something new to try, and then figure out what part of the game they can use it best at. I can almost guarantee that there will be some part of the game next year where a very maneuverable robot will have an advantage.
Some of my favorite robots (Beatty 2002 being the best example) were designed specifically to suit the game. But who knows if their walking design was designed in the first weeks of the 2002, or the summer before, or 5 years before.
The Kiwi drive and the ball drive are both very beautiful designs. One was used in competition, the other wasn't planned to be. Who knows when their team might win the championship because of their ultra-manuverable drive system developed earlier.
I certainly wouldn't discourage 702 from working on a swerve drive, whether or not they design their robot around it. They have the added bonus that they would be only the 2nd team to have a working swerve on the west coast (258 being the first).
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