[Ericgehrken]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

This is going to be so much fun this year! Since I'm not on an FRC team right now, I can speculate wildly without having to worry about giving up any Top Sekrits.

RobotAddict and I were talking about the most radical idea we could think of and came up with the following.

* Ignore the ringers. Let your alliance partners do that.
* Build a 12-inch-tall, maximum-weight bot with multiple-speed transmissions
* During most of the match, play defense
* At the end, deploy pneumatic forklifts off both sides of your bot, and lift BOTH of your alliance partners 12" off the ground

Would you pick an alliance partner that had lifting as its only non-defensive contribution?

I like your idea with the short and defensive robot but what if you are put onto an alliance in qualifying that has two other teams that barely do anything (i.e. wheels on box bots) then you lose a match because of that. I feel each robot should be self sufficient so that it can score well. They only count points for scoring offensively. Your idea will be a good plan for newer teams to design a simpler robots that might not have the ability to make an arm or program a light sensor. Good post.