[FTC]: First-year FTC teams looking for advice

[safiq10]

Now this is from my 3 years experience in FTC. I'm sure one of the past world champions can chime in and give a better opinion. We are a team from the Central Texas region, so do a little research to find out about what your region is like for competitiveness.

I believe that Karthik has laid down the golden standards for all robotics competitions. Do a couple things and be really good at them. If you feel that you can improve your robot over the season after going to a competition. Do it! Otherwise I would pick 2 tasks (maybe even 1 this year) and I would perfect that.

Andymark seems to be the the land where more advance teams go. I see a lot of teams now trying to use Andymark parts (stealth wheels for example) but at our qualifier most teams are using tetrix but when you get to your regional and super-regional some teams will be outsourcing parts form websites like openbuild, mcmastercarr, grainger, and home-depot. (I believe Techno Warriors Advance used 1 tetrix part on their robot 2 years ago)

I know in the past we have used a full on tetrix bot and have made it to Super-Regional but we had to buy additional tetrix parts. But bare bones depends on your strategy. Last year our lift kit didn't come in till the night before the competition but we managed to build most of it, but never got it working; however we made it to the semi-finals for the qualifiers using only our drive train and a good strategy.

At our Qualifier, I never saw a team CAD their robot besides ours. Personally I CAD similar to how I hear 148 CAD's, Everything is present. This allows me to know precisely how many of everything we need for our robot. But I'm sure you could CAD the entire robot and just not add the screws and bolts.

Now at our qualifier, hardly anyone scouts because our qualifier isn't the strongest generally if 1st and 2nd seed join together they can win the qualifier with 90% of the time; However a good strategy can always win. However once you get to the regional you will see 45% of teams start scouting and at Super regional it almost critical that you scout.

Over all I find that a lot of the same key concepts from FRC transfer over to FTC. Good luck if you need any help feel free to message me and I'll do what I can.