What do you believe is important this year speed or power? What is everyone’s felling on the balls are you going to bother to use them or just going to rely on the human player station?
I personally feel that ability to manipulate the balls will be important. There are 60 points worth of balls during a match, more than enough to make a big impact in the course of the game. Plus, without using balls, your points will be multiples of ten, really. The balls would allow you to the most “fine-tuning” of your score (and potentially your opponents’).
Anyway, just my $.02
and valuable $.02 it is.
I think this entire game is basically going to be decided by drive systems. Since it is a fighting game, I think torque is more important.
Sometimes, unintentionally in the finals… Gracious Proffesionalism turns into Malicious Proffesionalism…
~JVN
I feel that both are so important!
This game will be won by those that are first to the fight. Fastest to grab goals or balls first and then tough enough to hang-on and push people around.
But if i had to choose, i would choose torque. I could push you pretty far in two minutes.
Ehh… there should be an option for “both.” I will say here what I told to my team: “Transmissions Shift!” 8)
No really, to be totally serious, there are cases in this game where you want to have high torque, and other cases where you want high speed. Being a master of both modes could proove invaluable. I think! 8)
power power and more power. It will be the team that can have enough grip on the rug and power to move anything.
This is like 3 years ago when we had a puck to pull.
if you make a robot that put balls into a goal fast and even alot. we will steal it from you if you do not have the power to hang onto it.
We like pulling teams around the floor. Look at 3 year ago flims. you will see robot pulling the puck and 2 other robots with thier team mate on the puck. that is power.
drivetrain is the most important part.
If your team owns three goals you will win every match
mike
there’s a lot more to consider than sheer strength. a robot with high torque may be able to push the other robots around, but it would not be able to catch up them. likewise, a fast robot could not move anything at all, but as long as it will be driven well, it could be uncatchable.
there is no place to hide on the field. Be prepare to have big strong robot take control of your robot. because if a strong robot wants to lock onto you he will be able to pull you everywhere he wants and that is not being pinned.
The winning combo for the finals are two powerful robots
I don’t think your allowed to latch onto other robots??
But there is no rule against picking them completely up (as long as you gently put them back down again)…
Personally, I don’t see a reason to try and score balls. You could spend a large amount of time and effort scoring balls just to have them taken away 2 seconds later. Also you’re consuming energy working this pickup system, and the weight it takes up could be used towards making your bot more powerful and stronger. Why focus on scoring when you can just steal other teams goals? 2 minutes is a VERY short period of time and focusing on balls instead of goals and robots will waste quite a bit of it. I suggest having a bot that can overpower any other bot so you can steal what you need.
MORE POWER!!
makes that Tim Allen noise
The ability to maintain position and dictate where 1,2, or doubtfully 3(I would like to see the robot that can do that) goals are located can have a mojor imact on the score.
Just a reminder, by holding a goal in the goalzone you are far away fwom your own robotzone. And the 10 points of an empty goal are canceled out by the other robot going home.
I look at the speed option with a different view point. Speed, as I see it, is fast to grab the goals, fast to get the balls, fast in controlling the game.
It is pretty important to be in control of the goals faster than your opponents. That way, you control the flow of the game.
It is also important to get the balls first, so you can control where the balls goes as you see fit.
As soon as you lose control of the scoring objects, you are playing someone else’s game.
So, a fast robot can beat a strong robot by grabbing the goals faster, and run away with it. I think the fast robot should be able to get past the slower robot by maneuvering around the field but I could be wrong. But sometimes pushing force isn¡¦t everything.
That’s another thing. If your robot has great maneuverability on the field, then you can probably out maneuver another robot.
It really depends on who you are playing against, and who you have as the two other partners in the finals.
This is what¡¦s so fun about finals this year. All three robots have to be out to play the game at least once for each series. The combination of robots will make an interesting competition to watch.
*Originally posted by Ken Leung *
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That’s another thing. If your robot has great maneuverability on the field, then you can probably out maneuver another robot.
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That is why I am waiting to see the robot that can just spin in place with 1 or 2 goals…the other robots would have a fun time trying to grab on, as well as being 492lbs of stuff to have to try and move.
Our robot can do just that… grab two goals and spin 360 degrees in place. Hadn’t thought of doing that to prevent theft, so thanks for the idea!
ok in response I think the finals are going to consist of a robot that has a transmission which goes on drills and then shifts down into Chippy’s. The other robot will be a ball handler which may or may not handle a goal.
Also to those who think strong robots are the best remember that if the loser scores zero you get zero so be careful what you are stealing because as some people have found out that teams are willing to sacrifice a match if it means a top seed gets zero points.
*Originally posted by jeremy562 *
**Our robot can do just that… grab two goals and spin 360 degrees in place. Hadn’t thought of doing that to prevent theft, so thanks for the idea! **
No problem. Just hope you don’t try that at VCU. Might get me in trouble if it costs us a match.
But if the idea wasn’t to prevent theft, why the design feature?
Power and speed will both be important. Probably, power will be more important, as teams will be fighting over goals very often.
It’s funny to see posts from many teams who think their robot is the most powerful one out there and that no one can get a goal away from them. I’m sure that many teams think that (including us). Only a few teams will be correct, but many will be mistaken.
At a given Regional, only 2 or 3 robots can claim to be the strongest, most powerful robots… out of all of the teams at the Regional. That leaves many teams who underestimated their competition.
I think that we may have a chance at being these 2-3 most powerful robots… but it’s too difficult to tell at this time. I can only hope.
Andy B.
It’s funny to see posts from many teams who think their robot is the most powerful one out there and that no one can get a goal away from them.
this is so true I can’t wait to see the power that is out there. at lease we tested our out at a pre game and we did open alot of eyes. becasue they build a robot to steal goals an we walk up and take it from them and drag them with us. just to see the faces was good enough
Also to those who think strong robots are the best remember that if the loser scores zero you get zero so be careful what you are stealing because as some people have found out that teams are willing to sacrifice a match if it means a top seed gets zero points.
the lease you should get is 20 x 3 because idf the other team is trying to get zero point you can always go into there endzone.
or the best thing we did was push the other team into there end zone and keep them from coming out.
if you have power you can do almost anything you want to. a ball handler can only pick up balls that is not going to be good enough. We took our ball handler off because of what the pre game showed us.
I too, think that power is most important, although not everything. If you have an anchor, brake or chock (ABC) to prevent being moved (incredible friction coefficient) and held a goal or two in the scoring zone, then an ally could place numerous balls into your goals.
Short of that, I want to be the team who lets the ball gathers fill the goals so that I could try to steal them. 
As for those teams that think they are “All that and a bag of chips” when it comes to power, if you viewed any of today’s matches, I wasn’t too impressed with very many “power bots”. As Joe J. said, I’m sure that most of those who competed today thought that they were the most powerful out there-- before today’s competitions.
Sometimes reality hurts:(