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Unread 07-01-2009, 00:58
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JagWire JagWire is offline
Team 1742 College Mentor
AKA: Tim Long
FRC #1742 (Shockwave)
Team Role: College Student
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Rookie Year: 2006
Location: Oklahoma
Posts: 41
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Re: GDC you have failed us.

To me, this is a brilliant game. The GDC, as already stated, threw EVERYONE a significant curve ball this year. My team is actually worse off than a lot of rookies right now. We are having to UN-LEARN much of how we used to do things in order to deal with these new constraints and problems.

Ha, seems like just as we're settling on how to solve a problem we remember... "ohh yea... they changed that this year... back to the drawing board..." We've taken a lot for granted the past few years. We had finally settled on a great drive train we just kept repeating, so we never had to worry about that, just threw it together in the first week, and spent the rest of our time working on arms, manipulators, code, strategy, ect.

This year though... we have to completely rethink everything all over again. The only real advantage vet teams have this year is just a sort of familiarity with having to solve some interesting problems. That, and just having resources of engineers, mentors, ect. to help them understand the problems, and the solutions.

There are always rules that don't make us happy, but they're a big part of the challenge. Engineering isn't a fairy tale; we live in a world of constraints. Some of the best engineering I've ever done happened after I got over the fact that constraints exist, and I got down to business and built something that was innovative and worked well anyways in spite of it.

Don't let the challenge discourage you. Embrace it, let it drive you. Hehe, 'we don't do these things because they are easy, we do them because they are hard'
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Team 1742: Shockwave
2006 Robot "Sprocket"
2007 Robot "Rampzilla"
2008 Robot "Trigonosaurus"

Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.
I'll either find a way or make one.

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