What will be the most effective robot type this year

[Rick]

vote so we can compare the results of the poll to the results of competition

[bmusser]

3 goals would yield a low score for your oponents and thus you would get a low score also.

[tjrage_25]

You would get a low score in qualification rounds, but being able to keep the opponent's score very low will come in handy in the finals if you get picked.

[Benji]

youll get picked for the elimination matches if u win all ur qualification matches

[JVN]

With a dominating capability like that, I think it is likely you'd also get picked for finals... I mean, if a robot can grab all 3 goals it effectively dominates the playingfield... in the finals who cares about balance... shut em out, by giving them NO way to score...

[Kris Verdeyen]

A three goal controlling robot wouldn't necessarily be a three goal scoring robot. A robot could hold all three in the center of the field, rotate, and effectively fine-tune the score to whatever it needed to be by rotating.

The trouble is building a robot that, once it has the three goals, can do something with them. - those goals are huge lever arms. up against two quality robots, could easily be pushed around by a robot at the end of the goal - unless they've already thought of that.

Oh no!! I've said too much!

[JVN]

The goals may be lever arms, but they turn a 130 lb robot into a (assuming 180 lbs/goal) 670 lb robot. That's quite a large unyieldy mass to move...

[Dave Hurt]

Benji, that's not entiraly true...

In '99 I drove 308's machine to be 6-0, one of only 2 teams to do that. We didn't get picked up. It's all how you market yourself and the luck of the draw.

Just don't forget about those ball handelers.... with a good ball harvester you only need 1 goal to win....

[mrobrien]

If a speedy robot can get one goal and fill it up with 30-50 balls in under 40 seconds while avoiding having the goal stolen (I'd think it'd be hard to steal a fast moving goal with an evasive driver) as one of our designs should be able to do, that's 50-70 points assuming that our partner gets ten points (at least) by just sitting there. This seems easier to me than trying to chase down and catch all 3 goals, getting you 40 points vs 30 MAX assuming the same thing about your partner. Also, if the balls are in the game, it will probably be a much higher scoring match and thus give a higher multiplier to the winner.