We decided to take some time this year to put together a document analyzing the game from the perspective of what a low resource team could do to be competitive. Basically, it’s what we wish most Ri3D teams did instead of slap LED lights and hundreds of dollars of COTS actuators on their bot. [1]
So we set ourselves a basic challenge, Kitbot drivetrain and $500 total spend (total, so no FIRST Choice or voucher shenanigans) and we wanted to build a strategy that could contribute points to any elimination alliance at any regional or district event on the planet while also being easy to achieve. Then we took it further, we put together a set of rules for how to play the strategy together based on what partners you had in any given match and when to most effectively use power ups.
To top it all off we put together some Skill Tree’s with suggested improvements to Level Up the bot. These include what it lets you do, what the requirements are, Skill Checks for testing the viability of your implementation, some suggested resources, and suggested resources to help guide you.
In short, this is designed for teams that are reaching this point in the season and are still struggling with "what should we do.
This document was the work of a grouping of people including (in no order)
Brian Smist (6870)
Kyle Johnson (1610)
Marshall Massengill (900)
Michael Van Glahn (179)
Wil Payne (422)
Alec Mataloni (111)
Allen Gregory (3847)
Bailey Kahl (125)
Brian Maher (2791)
Chris Picone (3929)
Jeremy Germita (5012)
Josh Fox
Justin Foss (558)
Kellen Hill (1746)
Michael Schreiber (67)
Scott Meredith (5895)
Ty Tremblay (319)
We delayed releasing this document until today to allow teams to develop strategies on their own rather than cribbing what was out there. But if you’re stuck, here is a resource for you. As our own understanding of the game evolves some of the How to Play sections as well as the Skill Tree sections may change.
Let us know if you like the format/approach - we couldn’t “do” an Ri3D build due to the simple fact that we’re spread across most of the East and Central US, so we did the next best thing.
[1] Credit where credit is due - they’ve been FAR better this year about publishing useful information instead of just cleverly edited footage. Kudos all, but we committed to doing this and most of it was done well before any of the Ri3D stuff started coming out…