what type of robot will win the most?

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by ALIBI

Hybrid, Hybrid, Hybrid. That term has certainly changed from last year. Bots that can consistantly score well in hybrid will go a long way. A prior post talked about removing a trackball during hybrid, what about a robot that can remove two trackballs in hybrid? You know you will see it happen. It is like any other year, certain bots will do well depending on the alliances they are with or against. The key to this year is controlled speed. I do not care if you are a lifter bot or some type of shooter for hurdling. You have to be stable and reasonably fast. Defense, well, chasing down trackballs that are being defensively pushed around will be difficult. A fast lifter/shooter bot that can possess the trackball quickly will do well. No matter how well you lift/shoot the trackball, you still have to get it off the floor. Placing is overated, unless you plan on staying put to guard your placed trackball, someone will come around and knock it down, remember, there is no protection while placing the trackball on the overpass. The benefit to placing is that you can do it on either overpass so that if you are stuck by the other teams overpass, you could place there. Otherwise, why not hurdle (protected) and zip over the finish line for almost the same points?

The best bot this year: Better than average hybrid, must be able to remove the trackball, must be able to hurdle quickly, must be able to retrieve the trackball off the floor quickly.

Placing really should only be done in the last few minutes, or someone might knock the ball down. it's protected the same as hurdling, i believe - after all, who is going to say we're trying to place or hurdle until we actually finish the maneuver? for us, the two look exactly the same. Placing will come into play in two ways - first, it'll be a great way to score an extra 4 points at the end when your team might need it - although i expect the necessity of this will be limited. Second, it'll be a great way to score and extra 12 points at the very end when you don't have time to race halfway around the track to try to hurdle on your side. These situations will be much more frequent than the first, i think, mostly due to the fact that it's a lot of points where otherwise you'd get none at all.

Both ways, however, are very situation-dependent, and as such shouldn't be something a team counts on every game to score them points.

for the winning alliance, it'll be a combination of all types of robots, i think. You'll have one that races around the track very quickly, and thats all it does. The other two will be a trade off against hurdling speed and ball control speed. I have no doubt that there will be teams that will be great at both of these. But many more teams will be great at one, and only ok at the other, and an alliance with two of these teams will be much better balanced than an alliance with an all-star bot and two mediocre bots. And as always, there will be teams where everything doesn't come together like you would hope.