Quote:
Originally Posted by JVN
IMHO...
The question is not about short range or long range, not about turreted or stationary. The question is about throughput. If you can spit those balls out fast enough you are by definition a "dumper".
Once you take throughput out of the equation it is about accuracy. There are an infinite number of factors any number of which can be BLENDED into a design. To label a robot as a "shooter" or a "dumper" is strange to me.
There is a spectrum.
On one side we have a robot that can fire off 45 shots from 50 feet away using their super magic camera code in under 5 seconds and score 100% in 2 goals at once.
On the other side we have a robot that fires 1 ball every 10 seconds and can only score in a goal that is touching their robot and misses 50% of the time.
We all obviously want the first example, but we make tradeoffs based on our team's individual limitations. 148 found a balance of range-accuracy-speed-volume that made us very happy. Every other team found their own balance. Some teams don't need to find a balance because they are awesome enough to do EVERYTHING. Most teams cannot do this (or were too chicken to try... us included.)
I'm expecting 71 to unveil their Orbit Ball Howlitzer any day now that makes our robot look like a children's toy.
Honestly... the only stat which matters is the number in your "W" column. I guess we'll wait and see. I'm willing to bet that even if you gave 254 an inferior robot they'd have a whole pile of W's, and NOTHING about this robot is "inferior".
-John
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I completely agree. We have become so caught up in the semantics of these designs. There will be many different designs that will win regionals. Right now it is definitely too early to predict what will be the "be all end all design" (not that there ever will be). We have somewhat been debating shooter versus dumper and yet the ultimate will probably be a blend of the 2. 254, 148, 968, and 100 have built robots that lean more towards a "dumper" design but they are still shooting balls some distance. We (1771) lean more towards the "shooter" side of things with being able to aim more precisely, but at the same time we can still empty an entire hopper in under 3 seconds. Both designs have positives and negatives, but as long as each team takes the time to think of these and develop a strategy to take advantage of their strengths, they will have a winning design.