[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Marc P.

Your team keeps your robot, and continues working as you watch week 1, 2, 3, and 4 regionals. Four additional weeks to build, with the added benefit of watching 4 weeks of competitions to garner strategy, find out which mechanisms work best, etc. Now you and all the week 5 teams have a chance to field far more competitive robots than anyone in week 1.

This is essentially the arguement right here.

If we're honest, week 5 only teams might not build more than a drive train during the true build season. Why wasste the time when you have 5 weeks to scout out what works and improve upon it?

This year on my team we kept jokingly saying saying with 40 lbs of prefab and COTS we could build a regional winner/competitive robot on Thursday at a regional because we design so many COTS parts into our robot. When they upped it to 65 lbs we went from joking to a full day of saying, "Should we just assemble a robot from COTS and our 65 lbs on Thursday?"


No let me get on my soap box...

As a member of one of the teams referenced above in the "every year" category. There are certain things that the perennially competitive teams do other than build a second robot (we use the kit bot or old robots as a test bed not a 2nd robot because we can't afford to build one).

Strategy, Scouting, Picking, Continuous Improvement, Reliability.

Ask Wildstang, Hot, Thunderchickens, Pink or any other teams that made Einstien multiple times in the last 5 years since we started the 3 team alliance era and they will tell you those 5 things I mentioned above get you there. That's how a team can gop from not being picked at their only regional to winning a Championship division (my team in 2008). Most teams don't pay attention to the details. The perenniel powerhouses on the other hand pay attention to every detail and stratagem because they get treated differently by teams that go up against them because of their reputations. It forces them to be more creative and ready for more being thrown at them.

My $0.02.
Pete