The biggest problem with a ramp bot is the fact that you have to rely on your alliance members. I suspect that out of 10 matches (if you have the capability for the 60 points) that you would get it once. Look at the ramp last year, the only time it really got used heavily was during the elimination rounds. Always as the last minute thought, where one team usually didn't have time to get up. Now imagine your robot turning into that ramp, i really don't want a team rushing up on top of my robot to try and score some last minute points. Building a good ramp bot
is not a guaranteed 60 points. Don't get me wrong it will happen, just not during the qualifiers when you need it to.
One of the greatest lessons I have learned in designing robots for FIRST games is that you have to account for one of your robots not being functional (or sometimes just useless
). If you want to be successful you have to be able to win the match almost by yourself. I don't want to count how many non-working or barely operational robots (we have been one before too
) we have played with. Not until elimination rounds of regionals or at the championship will you usually get capable working robots to play with, i just wish it was always like that...
