Just for more context for those who didn’t compete in 2014:
It was a passing based game, meaning you scored more points for the single game piece being passed between robots. A lot of this came down to having a good driver and less on the bot itself, the chairs were basically the definition of a minimum competative concept. It would likely be an unbelievably brutal and probably horrid game using last years robot construction rules and motors.
The chair bots were good for 2/3 of the robot roles on an alinance (inbounder or mid-field from human player). So the versatility and ease of construction/ motilification were huge selling points (as well as proving that you didn’t need much to play the game well (obviously the chairbots were not making the big dance, but were still a viable option for regular play))
The additional costs to do both aren’t huge. Our alpha robot’s drivetrain already exists, because we’re going to reuse the drivetrain of one of our 2024 “non-comp” robots. All of the hardware is going to come from those robots as well, or just stuff we have lying around. The superstructure is going to be made of whatever scraps of 1x1 and 2x2 are on the rack, mixed with laser cut baltic birch that’s either riveted, clamped, or cleco’d together. I would guess that the amount of money that Alpha costs us directly is like $200.
If we were buying a new control system, new swerve modules, new motors etc for it, that number would be significantly higher.
We don’t have to wait for comp to be assembled to start on auto testing, drive practice, and strategy development. As far as “buying back more time” goes, Alpha is pretty high ROI for us.
Other major ways to buy yourself time are investing in your manufacturing throughput (more routers, more printers, etc) and building up your available supply of general use hardware.
Not sure how much of a factor this is. I know very few “high-level” coaches who are significantly influenced by a paycheck from the team.
Edit:
Making your coaches feel appreciated is definitely important to success, but I would argue that stipends are a minority factor in coach satisfaction. There are a few coaches who do this as their full-time job, and their situation is different than the rest of us.
I would give away my pennies on the hour stipend if it meant we had a teacher on the team. The real purpose behind it is just to have keys to the building.
Money is definitely a factor, but it’s definitely not the only factor. As others have said, there is a not insignificant minimum $$$ required for FRC, which is getting higher over time. But it’s more about how you use it. Attending more events, attending more offseasons, building more robots, seems to be the fastest way towards success. But if you’re spending your money to put an Eames Chair on a robot instead of a folding chair (to stick with all the chairbot metaphors here), it’s not going to get you anywhere.
We’ve had roughly 3 robots worth of components available each year. 2 of those are drivebases that were assembled in 2021 and 2022 that we just reuse for offseason robots or a kitbot build each season. Since 2022, we’ve been inspired by 1678 to build 2 different robots each season. An in-season robot, and a copy-bot in the offseason. Starting in 2024, we also build a kitbot the first week of the build season.
I think it’s a Mike Corsetto quote: Best way to get good at building robots is to Build More Robots.
Even if you could have this it’s not always the best, our mentor/teacher has the keys to get in any day of the week (unlike students who can only get in on weekdays) but our mentor doesn’t like going in on the weekends so the only times we ever go in on the weekend is if we forget something for competition.
Batteries are often overlooked when you get a little extra funding and I might advocate for that here. Having enough charge to make sure you’re always running at maximum capacity makes a huge difference when you get to the end of matches when you’re fighting against another bot.
i think a big way more funding translates into robot performance is small quality of life improvements and like student experience. if money(/time) can be spent on (FOR EXAMPLE) break areas, food, merch, outings, offseasons, more time per day during season, outsourcing of boring work, more qualified mentors, reach out for more students, etc, it can really increase morale and result in more productivity around the robot, which equals more performance.
higher quality education and leadership, and just general happiness would mean a world of difference in an FRC team.
As a student from a team with a bit of a shaky financial situation, more money would absolutely help us a lot with our performance. I could think of a lot of things we could buy to make performance better (krakens, faster swerve gearing, camera & processor for photonvision, new batteries, etc) that we just can’t buy due to our finances.