Last year, when we embraced defence, we were the most successful we had ever been. That is guiding our design this year. Since our inception, we have had a difficult time lining up to score. If we can add versatility while maintaining defence prowess (and we still have last year’s defence bot to test as a rival, though it is too tall for this year’s game), we will do it in a heartbeat.
If we sacrifice defence prowess, we will will have a major team discussion.
The end result will be a stronger team and robot regardless. So, needles to say, we are excited about mecanum drive.
I’d like to encourage teams attending our events to use mecanum. It will make it easier for us to win matches against them and we’ll be able to have shorter picklisting meetings since we won’t have to spend much time considering these teams.
My team has used mecanum in the past few years, but I - along with many others on my team- were strongly against using them this year. When precision positioning of the robot near the target was needed, the strafing mecanum provides was advantageous to easily reposition. It was very good in 2019 when placing hatch panels and getting hatch panels from the loading station, but this year the benefits aren’t present. The targets this year don’t seem to need small side to side readjustments to succeed.
The inevitability of being pushed out of scoring position by persistent defense really negates them as a n option this year if you plan to shoot for the outer/inner goal. It might not be that much of an issue if one only plans to use the lower goal, but they wouldn’t create any advantages either.
Looking at the results of the poll just confirm this - because, in addition to being disadvantageous on the field, mecanum wheels may actively hurt your chances of being picked for an alliance. A team might make an amazingly successful bot with mecanum this year, but in the opinion of someone on a team that loves mecanum they just seem far from the best choice this season.
As a member of a team that has won more banners with mecanum wheels than without them, I don’t understand the automatic DNP thing. Despite that, we have decided that mecanums would be a poor choice for this game and will be using something else.
If you didn’t have mecanum at about 100 sec left in finals 3 last year, or similarly ~85sec left finals 1, you probably could have beat us and added a 2nd DCMP banner to that pile.
Because mecanum bots are very easy to push across the field, so they’re a very easy target for any defense bot. They’re also significantly less effective at playing defense. Even the best robots break, and if you have a robot break that can play defense, you have them go do that. If you have a robot break that can’t play defense, you just have one more thing in your way.
I can see the defense aspect. I might weight that slightly against them in a pick meeting but I’m not sure I would count that as an out right dnp but different strokes for different folks! Thanks for giving an actual answer other than “anything that moves sideways is a waste of time” and “praise the poofs.”
From my own experience, although mecanum bots are (really) bad at playing defense against treads or tank drive, it was always hilarious when the mecanum bots were the only effective defense against other holonomic drivetrains.
Obviously there are advantages to things like swerve, but mecanum is extremely achievable, and if you have a well-trained holonomic bot it should be all but impossible to play defense on unless you decide to sit out in the open instead of any of the generous protected zones while taking high goal shots.
The real danger is from using mecanum but not playing mecanum - treating it like tank drive is the surest way to get ran over by defense. If you practice a lot and don’t do that, you’ll probably be able to negate the majority of the downsides this year.
In short, although I have advised my team against going mecanum this year due to our strategy not really requiring it and the metal bar, I think the downsides are (as per usual) exaggerated. If you can build a bot that can dodge defense entirely and shoots for either the low goal or from the trench run where pushing is literally a nonissue, I don’t think we’d ever consider counting that against you.
Anytime, worth noting I slightly edited my post as you were typing this one to include the ‘they’re easy to defend’ angle.
As an example, in This clip, 558 was able to hold 230, an otherwise powerhouse team, to 2 game pieces in the the time they were defending them. In comparison, This match at the same event they were able to score 11 game pieces in the same amount of time.
Like Electroken said, 230 has made plenty of mecanum bots. They had great drivers. They have a great strategy team. Mecanum in general is just easy to defend.
(Not trying to pick on 230 too much, they’re just an easy example for me since I’ve played in the same district as them for 8 years now, and they were on the mind since he just commented)
I would hazard a guess that the ease of defending should be somewhat situational depending on the game, the field, and the drivers. I think last year was a particularly easy year for defenders myself and I probably would have given a mecanum base last year very poor pick rating as evidenced by that clip and many other heavily defended mecanum bots throughout the year.
The teams I’ve been a part of through the years have used both mecanum and non holonomic drives to varying success and I wouldn’t necessarily say we were ever easier to defend against because the years we used them were (in my opinion) harder for defense and our drivers were particularly well suited for it. We used mecanums in 2018 and while I think we might have been slightly easier to defend, we didn’t see much defense and the holonomic was a saving grace when we were lining up to climb. I think there were probably other ways to help usline up to climb and we weren’t exactly an offensive powerhouse necessitating defense be played on us at all times but we did end up captain of the 6th alliance at our dcmp and made it to finals so I think it worked out.
But let’s be real - if you guys put your mechanisms on a KoP chassis you’d still have a ton of banners. Maybe more, maybe less, but it’s not the choice of mecanum that has brought your team success. It is your quality mechanisms, exceptional auto moves, and great drive teams.
I remember when folks looked at the prevalence of cigarette smoking amongst high schoolers and rightly pointed a finger at things like Joe Camel and Hollywood heroes for influencing kids toward addictive and unhealthy choices because it looked cool. I am leaning toward blaming FTC for the fact that we still are talking about these addictive and unhealthy products so many years after they have been statistically proven to be bad for teams. I’m not sure what other root causes might exist, honestly.
What’s the statistic that has proven them to be “bad”? Has it proven to be the sole cause of the “bad”? Are there other causes that lead to this “bad”? Or is it simply a correlation?
I just keep hoping someone will be open to an actual discussion on the matter like you, rtomp, and electroken but I also keep forgetting I’m on Chief so…
