The Highest Levels of Play

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by marshall

This actually brings up something that is on my mind right now. When does it become necessary/advantageous for a more average team to build multiple robots to compete at both a regional/district level and at the championship level?

We started building a second robot in 2013. Here's a general synopsis of how it has affected us:

No practice bot: 2008-2012
-2 championship appearances in 5 years
-no appearances in championship eliminations
-no regional wins
-normally seeded 15-30
With practice bot: 2013-
-2 championship appearances in 3 years
-2 appearances in championship eliminations
-1 division win
-1 regional win
-normally seed 1-10

In 2013, we simply decided we wanted to have one so we did it. We had a rough start, not actually finishing the practice bot until week 2 of regionals, but it helped immensely. It's always advantageous to have a practice robot, it will allow you to make huge improvements to your robot during competition season.