If you could Breakaway all over again...

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Strategy wise, I never bought it when teams claimed they didn't hang because scoring 2 points in 20 seconds was "easy". For one, hang time can be shortened (1114 and 254 are great examples of sub 5 second hangs) or nullified entirely (buzzer beating lifts from 67 or 1625). So it might not even take the full 20 seconds. Secondly, many people I talked to claiming this didn't really have data on how well their own robot would score points. It just "looked easy".

Each team has to judge their own build capability during the build season. Ask yourself, who are you to make the call for them when they decide that it is indeed easier with their tools to try to improve their kicker rather than construct an entirely new mechanism for 2 points, so long as the points get scored?

Case and Point:
Capability is coupled deep into strategy, even in a commercial market. Can every flat tablet be an iPad, with its ground-breaking features in some areas and shortcomings in other? No. But other companies in the market have tablets that have similar features, have less DRM, are cheaper, and have a less-aggressive marketing campaign. In the tablet market, iPad may be a pop culture superstar, but it gets major fail-points for getting any real work done due to its DRM (also known as iTunes), lack of keyboard, and lack of compatibility with common everyday devices. So for companies entering the market who play to their own strengths rather than Apple's, they may find that they have a superior product to a niche and are able to make money just fine. Those who enter the market and try to directly compete with Apple are at high risk for failure: getting past the marketing may only lead to intellectual property barriers.

[Wayne TenBrink]

Pay closer attention to the differences between the "Real" field elements and the "Low Cost/Team" Field elements. We built our tower using 4x4 posts for legs and spent the next six weeks figuring out how to reach the horizontal bar at the top. We removed our useless hanging device before our first match. Had we been staring at a tower with the true vertical pole (or at least thought about it), perhaps we would have come up with the superior solution (curl) to the "true" problem, which was getting above the platform, not reaching for a bar.

We learned a general design rule for future reference (regardless of the game): If a task needs to be accomplished only once during the match and doesn't need to be reversed, consider stored energy as the power source.

Good thread, but perhaps it should differentiate between "If we knew then what we know now" answers and "Considering the information that was available at the time, how could we have made better choices, and how can we do better in 2011?"

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Wayne TenBrink

Pay closer attention to the differences between the "Real" field elements and the "Low Cost/Team" Field elements. We built our tower using 4x4 posts for legs and spent the next six weeks figuring out how to reach the horizontal bar at the top. We removed our useless hanging device before our first match. Had we been staring at a tower with the true vertical pole (or at least thought about it), perhaps we would have come up with the superior solution (curl) to the "true" problem, which was getting above the platform, not reaching for a bar.

Sidebar: The practice field instructions FIRST gave for a cheap version tower were atrocious. The 4X4 posts they recommended were not a correct substitute for that situation.