What was there before AndyMark?

[magnets]

Originally Posted by ehfeinberg

I feel as FIRST has evolved over the last 20 or so years, teams have started to converge on similar designs. Back in the day, (really before 2010) I don't feel teams had a lot of experience building and designing different mechanisms. So they built what ever they thought would be the best for their situation. So you would get a lot of not so optimal designs for different arms or lifters, weird drives, and crazy mechanisms.

However, as FIRST has gotten older, teams have started to understand which type of mechanisms are the best. For example, if we had another game with inner tubes, almost every single team would have a elevator with a roller claw on the end. Why? Because this design was shown to be the most optimal in the past so why should a team try anything different. FIRST has transitioned from building something that works to building the most optimal design for the situation, and this is why designs have started to converge.

Shame, cause I loved the craziness of the older mechanisms, but great because the level of competitiveness has increased. I have no clue what is better or more inspiring, but this is a great topic for its own thread.

This is really true. I feel the same way. We no longer have wacky weird (but effective) designs. There's no longer weird stuff, like ball drives, swerve pods that go up and down, and other strange grabbers from team 47.