I think it's important to remember as more days go by and more and more robot pictures come out to not be discouraged. Remember what you've work so hard on. Continue to give it all the attention it deserves as you prepare for competition. If your robot is good at what it's supposed to do, you will be fine. More on that below.
We had a good discussion on our team surrounding the aspect of strategy. Strategy is my favorite aspect of FRC. I love developing robot strategy the first few days after kickoff, I love developing match strategies at competition and I love developing alliance strategies for selection and eliminations. However, we discussed that "Is finding that "Do it all" strategy that important or can you select almost anything? As long as you do it better than anyone else, will you be successful?
Take 2006 for example. There were two main scoring tasks; High goal(3pts) or low goal(1pt). The obvious main strategy most teams would choose to be successful is shooting in the upper goal. And you would make a compelling case. How many robots on Einstein scored in the low goal? But lets say for example you chose the low goal. And you were a beast at it. Would you be successful? You scored your ten pre-loaded balls in auto. every time and you scooted around the field and could harvest better then anyone else. Could you win regionals? Would you make Elims at Championship? I think you would. And I have some evidence to back my claim. Team 322 FIRE from Flint, MI was that team. They were a beast in the low goal. That year, we tried to shoot in the high goal. We weren't the best at our strategy, we didn't make eliminations at Championship. They did.
My main argument is this. Love your robot for what it is. Make it consistent at what it does and go out there with confidence and dominate. If your robot is a box on wheels, make it the best box on wheels anyone has ever seen. If you can't pick up any balls but you can shoot on the high goal in autonomous, then make it score those 2 every time and you'll be successful. Love your robot and be confident in what you have.
-Justin
jmontois340@gmail.com
Want more? Read an awesome blog here http://www.robogreg.com/
I fully agree with what you have. However, there's only one robot in 2006 that dominated the lower goal, and you named it... 322. And the only reason why we know that is because they were in our division, and had the pit next to ours. Were there any others?
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to stick out when you don't go mainstream, however, its not impossible.
Like we talked about yesterday... if you go big and don't succeed... people seem to understand. However, if you go the secondary route for a strategy and don't succeed, you just look real bad. 322 looked great because they were great. But how many low goal robots were out there that stunk? A ton.
In 2011, 1503 couldn't pick up off the ground.(well not that great... haha). However, they were dominate. Why? Because they executed the 'secondary strategy' (by not picking up off the ground) extremely well.
Whatever you pick, if you do it great, you'll be successful.
Consistency will win you championships...