We’ve seen several teams with buddy climb designs (Citrus Circuits, Byting Bulldogs, etc.) plus some that are rumored to have them in the works. However, after reviewing some of the Week 1 events, I haven’t seen a single successful use of a buddy climb mechanism. Citrus Circuits tried to use theirs (once) at LA North, but it didn’t work as planned. I haven’t seen any other attempts. Anyone know of one, even another unsuccessful one?
Also on that note, who’s still thinking along those lines? Do you have, will you have, or are you even considering a buddy climb?
We have a tested buddy climb.
We are working on a buddy climb.
We are thinking about adding a buddy climb.
We are not attempting a buddy climb (unless it’s on someone else’s robot.)
I know that 3539 used theirs successfully once at Macomb… They buddy climbed with 3175 who had been bypassed for that match https://youtu.be/0SuWDrdFWCk
3539 - The Byting Bulldogs out of Romeo, MI had a successful buddy climb in Semifinal 2-1 of the MCC District. I’m not sure if they had any others. Fun fact: 3175’s robot died so Romeo pushed them into the RZ and grabbed them for the buddy climb. Pretty impressive.
Okay, that was pretty amazing. Pushing a disabled robot into the rendezvous zone and deploying a successful buddy climb with them. They were one of the teams I knew about having a mechanism, but I’d missed this. Thanks!
Ah ha! Thanks! Here’s the video for 573’s climb. It’s Q72 at FiM Southfield. They did it with a pancake bot on a different type of mechanism than 3539.
They also did it in QF4-1. Unfortunately we messed up and missed our single climb to make it a triple and likely be balanced, but they pulled off their buddy climb.
I would urge the (currently) 4% of people considering adding a buddy climb to reconsider. My biggest takeaway from playing at LAN is it’s stupid easy to balance. We had 5 balance attempts in quals (3 doubles and 2 triples) and we balanced all of them with zero active balancers.
Plenty of teams were climbing wk1, and hopefully everyone else got the memo.
The semi-ironic thing about that buddy climb is that we had just finished adding it and getting it approved right before going out to that match since we’d been struggling with being able to climb in quarterfinals. Really came in handy there, even if we ended up losing the match.
The value is that you could theoretically lock in another RP every match. When the top teams are getting RP averages < 2, an extra RP every match could put you at #1 seed pretty quickly.
That said, it appears no one in week 1 locked in a high seed using a buddy climb, so YMMV. Buddy climbs are hard this year (not the least because you have to prove the other team “made” any part they need on their robot).
No, that got changed in Team Update 2. They added “without the assistance of another ROBOT” to the definition of MAJOR MECHANISM in rule I1. Since the part needed for the buddy climb is not useful without the assistance of another ROBOT, the team doesn’t need to have made it themselves.
