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Originally Posted by Ken Streeter
The strong offensive robots on Einstein only needed to be in their scoring position for about 4 or 5 seconds to score 10+ balls -- it's very hard to beat a team that can score 30 points if you play poor defense against them for just 5 seconds!
If there is a correlation between vertical and horizontal shooters, I think it is more due to the rate of fire characteristic, rather than accuracy of shots due to backspin. Indeed, many of the top robots were not accurate distance shooters, but were instead dominant when they got close to the target and could unload 10 balls in just a few seconds.
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Many of the Einstein bots were great ranged shooters, but they were even more lethal from close range (or, like 968, could catch missed shots while on the ramp), so they chose to fire from a closer range. 968 (and 254) clearly demonstrated that through-out the weekend, they could hit half-court shots if they wanted to. 1126, 522, 217, and 201 also had great ranges. But, they (aside of 201 and 522, who did fire primarily from very long range) could shoot more accurately and quickly from a closer range, so they chose to do so for reasons you stated.
But the interesting trend was that Horizantal wheels could also fire that quick (look at the Triplets for proof), and I was noting that the great sucess of vertical wheels over horizantal wheels at equal firing rates. 1115, 1503, 1680, 343, 176 and several others all had very rapid firing horizantal wheels, yet they did not make it to Einstein. Additionally, 343 and 233 had VERY similar designs, but 233 faired much better at the Championship event (and slightly better at regionals). One key difference in their designs was that 233 had a vertical shooter, and 343 a horizantal.
So, after reasons stated by many in this thread, I think that the slight improvement in accuracy is enough to allow for these rapid rate shooters to top their horizantal bretheren more often than not.
Another possibilities exists that, because for the reasons you stated, it was easier/more popular to build a rapid firing vertical shooter, and more teams created vertical shooters. Because of the greater quantity, that the law of averages had more vertical shooters with great success. But one would think that at least one of the several highly sucessful horizantal shooters could have made it to Einstein. Additionally, there were very very few pnuematic shooters, so, the law of averages would state that 1139 should not have made it to Einstein. But, perhaps it just was that slight chance that allowed that to happen.