On Game Design

[Ryan F.]

Originally Posted by Matt Adams

I would say that most typical small-medium teams are running budgets of 20-30k aren't limited by the costs on building the robot. The $5,000 for the first competition and $4,000 for a second regional, plus all of the buses or airplane tickets hotel arrangements... this isn't cheap stuff. This is prohibitive.

Money doesn't help you build a better robot... or even level the field. Great engineers will do more with less.

Totally true...people talk about all these tens of thousands of dollars people will spend on their robot....that might be nice and all...but it's definetly not necessary. Our team this year had the extra equiptment on the robot valued a little over 1000.... 500 being for donated machining of plates for our transmission. Besides those costs....almost no more money went into the robot. But, we were still able to be very competative...and take 7'th place at our regional.

Ellaborate systems are not needed to make a winning robot. Sure, they may be nice....but once they break down your in a very tight spot. We use simple...but effective solutions, that we know will work match after match after match. In the end, what matters is consistency.