I appreciate the changes.
Last year I watched our team (I’m a mentor) get slammed from half court ramming speed. You could see one particular opponent gear shift, speed up, and just drill robots. The ‘no ramming’ rule was NEVER enforced. I watched a little ‘tank’ robot (cute little thing) take a hit that was hard enough to snap a 1/2" steel shaft pin- the firing mechanism (from 2 years ago) dangled through the entire match.
I have video of a ‘claw’ holding onto our robot’s arm for well over 45 seconds- and they were assessed only a 10 point penalty whereas we were unable to score anything since they ripped an airline out.
In short, I’ve been watching ‘battle bots’ under the guise of gracious professionalism and ‘win at any cost’ masquerading as defense.
Some teams are very much dedicated and work throughout the year. They reuse code from year to year, have dedicated test platforms… it’s nice to have a year of ‘break’ to recover and try to rebuild.
So please understand that when I hear how you can’t run into people from behind and call it defense, or that when you can’t slap an arm and call it defense I may be inclined to roll my eyes and smile.
This year you’re just going to have to be faster and cooperate better than you’ve ever had to before.
In every other year each bot could be it’s own team. This year there’s only two balls and three robots- you’ve got to cooperate. You can’t go out and solo. You need to be consider all tasks and pick the best ones for a good alliance.
Yes… this will be an interesting year. I’m looking forward to it.
Now if we could just get a smaller court…