Are active intakes necessary to be competitive in Recycle Rush?

[Chief Hedgehog]

Originally Posted by BJC

I really don't think this is the sort of thing that can or should be voted upon.

Recycle Rush, like all FRC games have been in the modern era, is about how many points/second your team's robot / alliance can score. The more points you score, the more competitive you are.

The robot generally goes through a cycle in order to score. Something like:
1. Move to game piece(s).
2. Pick up game piece(s).
3. Move to scoring area.
4. Score game piece(s).
5. Repeat.

How quickly do can do a cycle determines how many cycles you do which determines how many points you can score.

So when you ask, "is an active intake necessary to be competitive" the answer isn't a yes or a no. An active intake is beneficial if it decreases your cycle time. If you are able to score more cycles than the teams you are competing against you will win.

Cheers, Bryan

Very rightly stated. Intakes can be very powerful mechanisms if you are able to stack and score effectively and efficiently. However, if much time is consumed gathering totes on an intake - then you are losing time scoring.

Stacking needs to be the optimal goal. Then how you gather the tots is secondary. If you use forks or the Greenhorns design - a lot of stacking can be accomplished.

If you spend too much time creating an intake at the cost of your stacking mech - so will your gameplay suffer.