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Unread 29-04-2009, 12:21
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Chris Marra Chris Marra is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Rookie Year: 2005
Location: South Windsor, CT
Posts: 309
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Re: Winning Drive Train

Quote:
Originally Posted by s_forbes View Post
One thing I noticed: 11/12 robot on Einstein were oriented with a 'wide' drivetrain. I don't know enough about all of these robots to tell how many had traction control, swerve, 4wd/6wd, fans, etc., but that would be a nice place to start if you want to determine the 'winning' drivetrain. If you're feeling ambitious, an analysis of the drivetrains on every robot in eliminations would be pretty cool, too.

I still think that good driving and strategy are way more important than drivetrain details, but that should be obvious.
This is the most underlooked post in the whole thread. I think it is clear that wide drivetrains were most effective, because they facilitated power dumper robots, which also proved to be among the most effective. Traction control, number of wheels, additional fans, swerve drive, etc. all played into helping teams win, but ultimately the combination of a wide robot with a fast unloading mechanism was deadly. As long as the drivetrain was controllable enough to pick up balls, and eventually pin, that was all that was needed to win. Optionally, playing 'run-away' defense, and combatting against that, was aided by additional features, but was an edge case because usually robots could and would get pinned.
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