Taking risks @ Nat's: Will your team do it?

[archiver]

Posted by colleen - T190 at 03/26/2001 10:44 AM EST


Engineer on team #190, Gompei, from Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science and WPI.



Situation as it stands... there are 4 shots of 80 teams for everyone to seed at nationals.. and with the average QP that quite a few teams have posted in regionals.. i venture to say we'll see those again at nationals..

So- what's your team going to do? In regionals, we met up with some conservative teams.. the mindset was "try not to do TOO much in a match".. a safe 150 or so was enough to get you noticed at least..

But I have a feeling 150 or so won't be anywhere near enough to seed you at nationals.. maybe it won't get you noticed either.. So how many teams are going to be willing to take the risk towards big scores..

In my opinion: you have to try to balance 2 every match.. T190 cannot really balance 2 alone.. but anyone who can simply tow one or two goals we can make into a 2 goal balancer..

what teams would be willing to help w/ strategies like this to score big??

Or will some teams stick to the conservative still..?

Will people be more ready to admit "ok, will go sit in the endzone if that's what's needed" (as we saw most teams in the final matches picked a robot just to do that..)?

And given that-- practice rounds-- will people be more willing to play them (at least right off the buzzer) as a two-minute round to see what can be done.. we'd like to practice a lot of our moves.. but outside of loading the big ball, many of them involve assisting in balancing by wedging, lifting the ramp to level, or pushing low-traction robots up and then lifting the ramp to level for them.. but it's usually hard to get practice on this...

Done talking too much Let's hear what you think...