[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Don Rotolo

Not being able to hurdle is not an insurmountable deficiency.

IF your bot can...

Take down a ball and Cross 3 or more lines in Hybrid and Drive fast and stay in control, then you can be a contender.

If you are just 2 of those 3, then you are unlikely to be a top seed.

Taking down a ball is important, at the beginning of the match to bring balls into play, and at the end of the match to deny the opposition the bonus points. Just remember that you might end up giving the other team a hurdle...

Crossing 3 or more lines in Hybrid is important because you can start the match with a decent lead, 12 or more points.

Driving fast is OK, but staying in control is more important, to avoid penalties, Often there are traffic jams, with 3 bots and 2 balls all over one end, so being able to thread the needle and get past is a good thing to have. Ramming is penalized, whether inadvertent or not. Pushing is not a valuable characteristic this year.

IF your bot can hurdle in a reasonable time (our 15 seconds is FAR too slow), and gain control of the ball easily enough, then you can drop one of the above and still contend. If you do all four well, you're going to be in the very top.

Just some observations from the NJ Regional.

Don

Don,
I agree with this also. After watching the regional play all weekend and speaking with our team, we know that crossing 3 lines is good and knocking a ball down (at least one of our alliance teammates doing it). It wont take you out of the game, if the opposition has a good auto also. We know we can cross 3 lines, but our knocking the ball off is iffy, since we didnt have enough time to test.
Knocking balls down at the end effectively and quickly is important, and we realized that during the build season. We made sure our manipulator (arm) was not the device used to knock balls down. I saw a lot of teams that followed that concept also.