[Dan Petrovic]

It depends on how teams want to play the game.

If alliances want to outscore eachother with tubes, ramps can grab that win, but all it takes is a row of 7 to beat a row of 6 and two robots lifted 12". It would take a column of 2 to tie the match, and it would take another tube in that row of 6 to win it. If you're focused on getting your robots up, there's no guarantee that you'll have that row of 7.

If teams are playing effective defense, there's no guarantee that the opposing alliance will have a row of 7.

You don't have to have ramps to win. You need a good set of scorers, maybe a defensive robot to either keep opposing teams from getting in the way of your scorers or from scoring them selves (either with tubes or getting lifted by their alliance partner), and a good strategy.

Our alliance took a risk in Indiana and went without a lifter. We were picked because the alliance captain believed that us and 931 could score enough to keep ramps from beating us. We could have gone onto the finals and maybe won the regional with a good enough strategy.

Unfortunately, luck ran against us and we lost in the semis.

Moral of this story is that you don't absolutely NEED ramps to win, they are just a good idea. We lost because of other circumstances out of our control, but that's not important right now. The fact is that we didn't lose because we didn't have a ramp. It wouldn't even have made a difference even if we did have a ramp.

I see ramps as a safety. If it's looking bad, then get those robots up.