[Tom Line]

Ken, I agree 100%. This game is VERY VERY hard.

1. Creating a kicker that is adjustable, can rewind quickly, is consistent in kicking distance and robust is hard.
2. Creating a ball magnet system that can reliably hold balls is very, very hard. There are only a couple designs out there right now that do it, and those designs are propagating through the competitive teams. You've got the roller system (semi effective but relatively easy) pioneered by the 17XX ball magnet boys, the pinch system that 148 posted and so many people copied, and the vacuum system on a couple bots.
3. Creating a lifting mechanism is even harder within the given constraints - low COG, etc.
4. At least a decent drive train in combination with the above.

So far I've only seen a handful of bots combine those into a winning combination, and they ARE running away with things.

Think back to '07. There were hundreds of very different and effective ways to hang tubes. Think to '08. Forklifts, arms, firing mechanisms - there were many many bots that could gets those balls over quickly. Think to '09. Dumpers were a dime-a-dozen, incredibly effective, and generally easy to make.

In '10, you have to at least a combination of a good kicker + drivetrain, but you're going to get overlooked without a magnet. Likewise, a +2 points per match hanger is a pretty big thing if you can manange it. Just look at how many robots out there have managed to combine all three effectively and then tell me again how easy this game is. In the early week games, it wasn't uncommon for half the bots on the field to be unable to kick, and nearly NONE moved in auton.

Pushing balls into the goal is reasonably easy (except for the outside edges where balls get stuck on the goal). Any other facet of this game simply isn't.

Going into the middle of week 4, our team was in serious trouble. Our kicker was functioning well, but our magnet was DOA and our hanger not much better off. It took a herculean effort to get it into the bag. Indeed, our comp bot had NEVER been driven on the competition field before it went in. We ended up chucking most of our autonmous (we never moved at Cass Tech) in favor of getting the basic systems functioning well.

It's all just opinion of course, but this has been the hardest game to we've dealt with in the last 5 years on 1718.