[archiver]

Posted by Mike Soukup at 1/31/2001 6:09 PM EST


Engineer on team #111, Wildstang, from Rolling Meadows & Wheeling and Motorola.


In Reply to: Re: isn't that a bit forward?
Posted by Suneet Upadhyay on 1/31/2001 5:04 PM EST:



: Quite right. The best way to get in to the elimination is to have a considerably versatile robot that can hang in there, even with incompetent alliance partners. A robot doesn't necessarily have to be able to do everything well, but it should be able to do enough things to survive.

I'll concede that the best way to get a lot of points in the seeding rounds is to be versatile and not have to rely on partners who may be broken or may not be very good. But the best way to get a lot of points in the elimination rounds and win the competition is to get an alliance of robots that compliment each other. I can guarantee that a team of robots who can do everything well, but don't stand out at a single task would lose every match to a team of robots that could only perform 1 or 2 tasks and were excellent at that task.

So the choice for each team is (or should have been a few weeks ago) do you want a robot that does well in the seeding matches and will probably make it to the elimination rounds, or do you want a robot that may not be in the top 8 (automatic elimination rounds) but may get picked by another team because you're the best at a specific task. That's a very tough choice. Many teams will second guess the decision (in both directions) they made in this respect.