Buyers' remorse / Pig in a poke

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by jlindquist74

When you tell any of your kids that winning isn't important, or isn't that important, the flapping sound you hear is your credibility flying away. You say that, and they know you're full of it. They didn't spend six weeks of their lives building a robot to look good, run well, and play nice with others. They built it to win.

That simply isn't true for many teams. There are plenty of teams who are well aware that they aren't going to bulid the best robot in the competition, and they may be better suited not focusing on the primary scoring objective. You hear it all the time in strategy and design presentations, that many teams should focus on doing one task well, especially a complimentary task (like inboudning or passing this year), than trying to do everything. Yet there are plenty of teams who eschew this advice, not because their own hubris, but because they enjoy the engineering challenge, enjoy lofty goals, and want to build a machine that can achive the difficult objectives, regardless of whether or not it will be one of the best on the field.

This year, my team did go simple. We opted for a complimentary design focused on inbounding, passing, defense, and maybe catching. We did that because we wanted to be competitive at all of our events, so we could reach MAR championship. But that hasn't always been our design goal, and that's certainly not the driving force behind all the students on my team or other teams. I've seen a multitude of students who'd rather build a "cool" robot than a winning one. They wanted mecanum wheels and turreted shooters, even if they rarely possess the strategic value on the field to be make them worth the investment in the build season. I've met plenty of mentors who'd rather design for a difficult challenge, knowing we may fail, than tackle a simpler challenge that we know we can accomplish. These aren't lesser motivations, they're just different motivations. Winning is not everyone's ultimate goal, and it's not the only way to foster a culture that appreciates science and technology.