Harmonizing is Overrated

I’ve seen too many comments from people discussing building robots with small frames to optimize for Harmony points. Harmony points are massively overrated and shouldn’t dictate the size of your robot… triple Harmonizing will be very rare since the incentive to difficulty ratio is way out of favor.

To achieve the Ensemble RP you need at least 2 robots climbing. If you have any Traps scored, that’s all you need, and you don’t need any Harmony points. If you don’t have any Traps scored, you are either in a position where all 3 robots need to climb with at least 2 Harmonizing, or you’re relying on your Human Player to Spotlight.

Given the emmergence of Trap shooting as a probably viable means of scoring in the Trap, it feels like the Ensemble RP needs to be achieved basically every match if you want to seed high. Teams that plan to seed high are planning to score in the Trap. If you’re scoring in the Trap you don’t need to Harmonize…

If you’re not scoring in the Trap, you definitely want to give yourself the ability to climb anywhere on the Chain to maximize your ability to Harmonize. But you definitely don’t need to worry about fitting a third robot on your Chain.

If you’re going to optimize anything in this game, it should be your robot’s height and its weight. Height unlocks a huge amount of the field to drive through, and reducing weight will make your robot faster which will enable you to run more cycles. If growing your frame from 26x26 to 32x26 makes it easier to stay under the Stage, that’s a no-brainer. If growing your frame buys you a week of systems integration time during the build season that’s a no brainer. If you’re designing a 24x24 robot in order to optimize for an extra 2 Harmony points you should reflect on what you’re giving up to achieve that goal.

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But small bots are easier to carry around Ryan. Gotta optimize for doorways and cars man.

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Which one are you banking on more teams attempting to pursue in season - climbing, or either climb-tilting to score in Trap/lining up the perfect shot to nail those five points?

We’re building a little undersized to build in more error for the double. If three works, happy accident.

Getting all 3 on a single chain seems like overkill, but if your robot can’t get the trap, then you’d better be able to fit a second robot on there with you. We might have a trap thing figured out by our week 4, but for our week 1, our requirement is to hang on the side so we can get 2 robots on 1 chain (and then a third on one it’s own) for the RP.

I’d rather have a super reliably 2 robot harmony than a 50/50 trap climb.

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