[dtengineering]

I'll say 2004... not because the game was any better... all the games have been good, but because of the second part of the question "what would you do differently with your robot".

Well, for starters... we'd make a robot that could turn. With 2004 being our rookie year, and no one on the team ever having attended a FIRST event (our total robot-building experience up to that point was mini-sumo robots that we designed and built in class), and the nearest Canadian FIRST team a couple thousand kilometers away (we didn't know about the Seattle teams then) we really, really had no clue what we were doing.

It would be fun to re-do 2004 with our current knowledge. We'd probably rip off some ideas for the design from 1241's ball catching machine, or 33's incredible ball collection system.

On the other hand, the 2006 game left the best "legacy" in terms of a demo robot that impresses people. With a full pan-tilt nerf cannon we don't have to explain why we are lifting tetrahedrons, or anything like that... we just blast away. The robot is cool by itself, independent of the game. This is not to complain about the '05 game... which had probably the coolest scoring system that I have seen yet. This year's game is pretty good, too, although it bogs down somewhat when teams focus on defense rather than offense.

In the end, though... you can never go back, and I really don't want to. Onward to '09.

Jason