[Jaine Perotti]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

What I would recommend is to keep thing simple and not try to build a robot that is a Jack of all trades and a master of none.

I agree with this advice.

Your rookie year, it will be wise for you to decide upon a strategy/robot that completes only one simple task reliably and efficiently. DO NOT try to make your robot over complicated, and DO NOT overthink your strategy.

Pick the element of the game which seems to be the most important to getting the largest score in the simplest means possible, and focus on that ONE element; do not try to focus on every other possible task and do everything at once.

In fact, keeping your strategy simple will probably enable you to be more successful than if you were to try to do everything. My team’s rookie year, we kept our strategy and our robot simple, yet we seeded 6th at the UTC New England regional and won the highest rookie seed award.

Remember, your goal in your rookie year is not to win, so much as it is to develop yourselves as a team and get some experience under your belt; enabling you to be more competitive in your future years. Do not get caught up in the idea of being able to do everything possible; complexity in strategy and robot BY FAR does not necessarily spell out success for a team. Work hard and focus your energy on completing one task effectively and reliably every match.

If you have a robot that reliably runs every match, and completes a single, strategically significant task every time it runs, you will be doing better than half of the other rookies out there.

Good luck!

-- Jaine