The Highest Levels of Play

[marshall]

Originally Posted by artK

Could you give an example of what your talking about happening? Because I see two ways this might be happening. One is like what 1241 and 1285 did this year having two robots with two strategies? The other is like what 900 did this year with the harpoons at champs.

I don't know that I have a specific example in mind honestly. What I can do though is explain why this is on my mind lately.

North Carolina is moving to a district model for 2016. No surprise there really. However, if you've been watching 900, you'll know that we're a fan of the niche play the last few years. It makes it fun and different for us.

District play doesn't lend itself to niche roles though and if we hope to get back to St Louis (and we do) then we may have to 'abandon' our unique interpretations of the rules in favor of building a robot that is a little more mainstream.

Nothing wrong with that but I'm not under any delusions that we could keep up with the teams who have been building robust and awesome mainstream robots for many years. We're good but we ain't that good. Having a more mainstream robot instead of a niche play is less valuable at Championships if we seek to go further... and we do. I suspect that the niche robots are more valuable as alliance partners during selections at Championships than they are at a district event. Of course, I could be completely wrong.