Who are your top team picks this year?

[abeD]

I want to add another question here:

If you had to make an alliance what 3 robots would you put together and why?

beatty (71) and 25. amazing. there are so many like great robots this year i just cannot decided my top 10.

-Court-

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Gillz

I've only been to the GLR,

Team 33
The GM Triplets
The Feds
Team 66
Team 47

I'd add 469 to that list. We'll see 217 Thunderchickens this week at Detroit.

27, 302, 397, 815 and 451 also have good prospects.

[JJG13]

Originally Posted by David55

from the two regionals i have seen (UCF and VCU)

Metal in motion 343
Sparky 384
MARS 1523
Pink 233
Krunch 79

I really liked these robots!

I don't know how you could watch the UCF regional and not add team 86 that list. They have an amazing bot.

[Dan Richardson]

Originally Posted by JJG13

I don't know how you could watch the UCF regional and not add team 86 that list. They have an amazing bot.

I'd have to second that, 86's machine was simply stunning to say the least. It shot balls into that center goal faster than I could count.

[Shu Song]

without a doubt, 1126 is at the top of my list.

[abeD]

86 was incredible, after allying with them i have to say you give them 10 seconds to shoot and you can win the match just from that. truy the best ball intake to shooter i have seen so far.

[Justin_302]

Originally Posted by 65_Xero_Huskie

i think that canada is gonna smoke the teams for a while, until teams can get an auto mode where they will stop them in automode, ( we did beat their automode, thanks to our alliance playing D while we scored 24 points ) but that was a lucky 2 shots we won by, id have to say canada is a major threat to everyone, ill post video when i can

Canada is no threat. Every robot has a weakness and after another regional, teams will find it and exploit it. 451 had to park on the ramp to shoot so what did other teams do, they would get on the ramp and block them from shooting. At Its a simple strategy that works. As for teams,
1.469
2.1503
3.33
4.451
5.201(FEDS)
6.47
7.66
8.1114
9.322
10.302

[Chris.Steimel]

Speaking to the Canadian triplets, there are definate weaknesses, especially since there are three of them to test strategies against. We know how to beat them and will test them at nationals if we see them. Best of luck to them though, they have a very solid design.

[Techno Wizards]

I think the top team that i have seen has to bee team 20 the rocketeers they made 10 balls in autonomous it was amazing to watch at the hartford regional and i got it all on tape then they made 6 one after another while getting pushed around by other robots they would shoot at the same time and make them


MY PICK FOR THE NATIONALS TEAM 20

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Justin_302

Canada is no threat. Every robot has a weakness and after another regional, teams will find it and exploit it.

Then you obviously haven't seen the Northern Knights, 296. It's only weakness is... errr.... The thing was shooting from dead against the side rail of the field within 10 feet of their opponents driver's station wall. The only reason they didn't make it past the semis at BAE was a faulty victor and a DQ of a robot on their alliance.

As for an alliance capable of winning Atlanta, I'd say 296, 25, 195 (or a similarly defensivly godly robot that has a decent shooter).

The best way to defend against the triplets is to keep pounding them from the sides and front and eventually their "unbreakable" treads will break immobilizing them the rest of the match. I noticed this a few times at GLR, twice in particular during the finals matches. Also they rely on sweet spots during auto, block the sweet spot they cant score with out readjusting. But other than that very good robots, with great scoring capabilities

But just FYI.

[Jack Jones]

I have never seen #469 start a season this strong, yet they're always right up there at the end. Look for them to go racing past the field - once they get their strategies in order.

[Dillon Compton]

Originally Posted by The Subway

The best way to defend against the triplets is to keep pounding them from the sides and front and eventually their "unbreakable" treads will break immobilizing them the rest of the match.

So basically, by violating the spirit and intent of the FIRST competition and damaging something that a group of students and mentors spent 6, very long, very involved weeks designing and manufacturing, you can cripple a robot giving you the upper hand? One should note that "intent" is quoted as a factor for penalties/DQs in the rulebook this year, and your intent CERTAINLY is against the rules; I would hope that after your repeated ramming, your robot would be DQed or penalized well before the treads broke. But whatever, I guess everyone cant play real defense, like actually pushing the other robot instead of ramming it with the intent to destroy.

But hey, what do I know? I'm only interpreting Gracious Professionalism the same way that 99% of FIRST participants do, and relying on the demonstrated intent and mission of FIRST; to inspire and drive students, not to take 6 weeks of their life and break it just because they made a design so good that their opponents needed to disable them to win.

/rant. Thread, return to on topic!

Sorry about the violation of forum etiquette, but I am incensed.



On Topic part of my post:

Team 25 is definitely in the top this year, as is MOE 365, whose robot seemed fairly impressive from what I've seen/heard of it. I also think that my team will pose a bit of a threat, since we should be able to push just about any team sideways down the field and onto a ramp and pin them there.

[Jack Jones]

Originally Posted by The Subway

The best way to defend against the triplets is to keep pounding them from the sides and front and eventually their "unbreakable" treads will break immobilizing them the rest of the match. I noticed this a few times at GLR, twice in particular during the finals matches. Also they rely on sweet spots during auto, block the sweet spot they cant score with out readjusting. But other than that very good robots, with great scoring capabilities

But just FYI.

^tisk tisk

The way to beat the triplets is three fold.

First - divide and conquer - don't let one of them seed higher than third. (How? read on...)

Second - match them one-on-one in auto mode - there will be many who get their stuff together enough to do that. Others will cut them off before they shoot.

Third - starve them - once they've shot their load their opponents foolishly let them back to face the HP. Keep a bot in front of them. They can't load from the top. They can't shoot what they don't have.

A fourth will have to wait for next year. And that's to ban the practice. It can only lead to escalation where GM, FORD, and others form multi-teams. The little guys will be shut out. The US auto companies should not mind the ban; TOYOTA has joined the fray.