We competed at our first Starstruck competition yesterday.
Our robot was not extensively tested before competition. This proved to be a problem. During the competition, we had to replace several parts of the robot. Also, our drive train was guaranteed to stall after less than a minute of match action. We found ourselves fixing a new part of the robot after every match. That left us with no time to attempt a skills run. We didn’t have an autonomous for about half of our matches (I ended up making a quick autonomous that pushed the cube into the near zone).
We went 2-4 in qualifications, ranking us lower than 9185B… We were allianced with 598A and 6008D and made it to the semifinals (shout out to those teams).
Anyways, our robot:
4 motor x drive
6 motor launcher (46644 design)
2 piston claw (5327C design)
Here is our third qualification match (the first match where our robot deployed correctly):
Three teams at the competition had launchers. Some teams were claw dumpers. Others were backwards dumpers.
A few teams had hanging mechanisms.
Aside from the build quality, not too bad! If you fix everything you have on your plate, that could be a pretty good bot. Any hang plans?
I have had the same problems at events all you need to do now is go back ad test and fix and at the next competition your team will be one of the best teams there. You can’t just be great at your first competition it takes time and hard work at your net one tell the judges that at the first one you guys didn’t do as well as you wanted to. That will get you great bonus point with them. Good luck and just fix what you got.
Wow. Very nice robot. I was just wondering what the weight of your robot was? In the video, your robot stalled towards the end of the match. I think if you just tune the launching angle and the power you might be able to compensate for the overshot stars.
Nice robot! That catapult has INSANE power! How many rubber bands were on it? Seems like it might be 1 or 2 too many 
Awesome bot! Can’t wait to see the next iteration.
Thanks. We do have hang plans but they are just scattered idas at this point.
Yes, bad competitions are better since we learn a lot more than if we just win.
I think somewhere around 10 to 15 pounds… maybe…
Yes… we didn’t have time to adjust before the march so we just added a couple rubber bands and this is what happened.
It has about 40 total rubber bands (#64).
I can’t either 
You guys are looking good. We’re also trying to launch stars and had some issues in our first tournament (slow intake being one of them, gear trouble, etc). We are not giving up the ghost. By the end of the season, the shooters will be giving the dumpers and claws a run for their money. It is much harder to perfect the launcher, but once we hit the sweet spot - let the games begin!
