On Game Design

[Ryan F.]

Originally Posted by P.J. Baker

I don't accept that herding small balls was easy. Without capping, your HP needed to make 10 shots to offset a hanging robot. Many teams thought they could accomplish this by simply pushing the balls around, but had trouble with it. The only ball machines that I saw make an impact were the catchers or gatherers. I would describe both of these as intermediate tasks

Simple solutions can work wonders. True...those methods of ball collection were great...but there were some simple things that you could do to make your robot herd the balls. This year...we used some 1x1.5 alluminum tubing....and made a bumper that rode on the ground in front of out robot. The balls would hit it....and it would create backspin on them..keeping them with the robot. It worked wonders, and allowed us to herd very well without a complex mechanism.

Sometime I think people really need to remember the difference between theory and reality. Complex mechanisms may work great....but sometimes a bar of alluminum is all you need.