Pure Shooters -- 2006 Hall of Fame

[Jack Jones]

One request: No reputation votes. If you haven't seen the robot in person or on a Webcast, please don't list them.

As a volunteer, robot inspector, and referee at GLR, MWR, Milwaukee, and Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to see many good shooters close up. As a referee I've avoided voicing my opinion on them, but since I'm not working Atlanta this year - here goes:

I'm sure there are other great shooters out there, but these are the ones that I've seen - Ranked in order of my assessment:

1114 - Deadly accurate and fast shooter, almost immovable, top/front & floor load, chassis auto-aim slower to respond than turret type. Beat them by blocking human load into front of bot - push into wall, or get in between the bot and humans

1503 - same as above (? third triplet gets way less out of same robot)

25 - Deadly accurate and fast shooter. Fast and powerful drive train. Not easy to move, but was not facing much in the way of powerful robots in Vegas. Top load only. Beat them by not letting them into, or out of, the human loading station. Do not try pushing them off their shot unless you do a pik on front corner, or plant yourself directly in front of them - their shot comes out lower than most of the great ones. Do not try pushing them onto the ramp, they like the elevation and will drill shot after shot.

469 - Deadly accurate and fast shooter. Turret auto-aim best of the bunch. Their strong suit is their strategy, which is also their weakness. Take them off it and it's panic time. They too can't shoot what they don't have. Their human load is a very small target.

494 - Not as deadly accurate but fast shooter. Turret auto-aim slow to respond. Complex ball handler prone to malfunction. Yet they and 70 manage to win because the others leave them alone to gather ammo.

70 - Same as 494, except drive team less experienced.

111 - Very good shooter. Turret-aim second only to 469. They like to plant themselves against corner of the platform's side plexi. Have omni wheels on back. Rear quarter pik will spin them. Do not let them alone when they play back-bot and gather a ton of balls - not unless you want to be picking them out of the garbage can. Shut them down early, otherwise Raul will out think you!

987 - Impressive in that they play smart. Unimpressive shooter because it's way too low - but they find opportunities if you let them.

71 - Was shooting less than 50% at MWR. Maybe because they took a fall in practice that messed them up big time. But they know how to play. And just like all the above will kill you if you leave them alone at ANY TIME.

Honorable mentions.

79 - Good shooter, but it leaves the bot about four feet high. Nuf said.

1213 -They won every autonomous at MWR (except for one when pit-crew error took out their launcher [and them out of #1 seed], and one in elims when they got hit hard), averaged 61.8 (alliance) points/game. Had they driven the robot the way it was designed, and maintained it the way that they should, then they may have been something other than an also ran.