[Donut]

I certainly think and hope there's a place for them this year, our team built their design based on that fact.

What I haven't decided yet is which type of non-hurdling bot will be most effective. Just as there is a shooter vs. arm debate, for non-hurdlers I have the question of whether herders or lap runners will be more important.

Lap runners have the ability to score significant points without a ball just because of their speed and size, and will be the most valuable robots for hybrid if they can avoid collisions. With their maneuverability they are also well suited to play positional defense by parking in front of parts of the overpass to give a hurdler a more difficult time getting to it. On the down side every lap runner I've seen has no way to interact with the trackballs if necessary other than pushing them, and I don't believe I've seen any with ball knock-off mechanisms either.

Herder bots will be larger and although they will probably be designed for speed, their speed advantage won't be nearly as large as the one lap runners will have. Herders can provide lap support for alliances if necessary, but will have a larger impact assisting with the trackballs. The best herders will be able to put up point numbers on par with the better hurdlers when given a trackball, or they can shuttle them around to slower moving hurdler allies for maximum ball points. Herder bots will probably see the defensive role more than any other robot design, playing keep away with the opposing alliance's trackballs and removing balls to negate end bonuses.

I see lap runners working well in offense-oriented alliances, most likely with 2 hurdlers or a herder and hurdler that can handle the balls themselves. There could be an alliance with multiple (or all) lap bots that ignores the trackballs, but this alliance would have to try to win the game in hybrid mode, since they may have trouble scoring in teleop if the opposition slows down the tempo of the game.

Herders will be in the more defensive role, playing nuisance against the opposition while 2 hurdling partners rack up points. There may also be a "hand off" alliance that uses 2 herders to run balls to a single hurdler or an alliance with 1 hurdler, 1 herder, and 1 lap bot, but these will only happen at Regionals with mostly broken hurdlers or if the herder is extremely good at scoring with the trackball (in excess of 36 points).

Regardless of which one plays a bigger role I still see one of them being necessary to the best alliances of this year. With only two trackballs on the field someone has to run laps or defense, and a robot designed for that purpose will be better at it than a hurdler that does it on the side (there will not be a hurdler this year that can outrun lap runners like 148 or 1519, and since most hurdlers capture the ball they will be unable to use their manipulators on the opponent's balls which many herders will be able to do). The only way I see 3 hurdlers performing better is in an extreme hurdling hand off scheme passing balls over the overpass to each other, and from robot designs this year I don't think teams will be able to do that very effectively.