Which one do you predict will be more important in this year’s game?
Unlike Sack Attack, large-scale descoring isn’t allowed this year which means that speed will be more important. Of course capacity can help, but only in terms of efficiently moving cubes. If you can get more capacity without reducing speed much, go for it, but otherwise it’s not worth it.
Accuracy and precision. 
^ This.
The best Skyrise robots are going to be extremely stable with deadly accuracy. Once you have that, you can make it as fast as possible without giving any of that up.
I’ve heard anywhere from two cubes to eight cubes as being the best capacity, but I still think four. With four cubes, you can fill the Skyrise in two runs and fill up any goal to its safe limit (The descorable 5th cube on the high goals isn’t worth the extra trouble).
Speed is great, but its definitely not the 1st priority.
I’m curious if anyone has ever developed a computer model that can perform something like time-motion studies of the games. It would be interesting to see a computer model that, for example, could see the effects of driving speed vs. lifting speed for various cube-carrying capacities, etc.
I’m guessing there are some “sweet spots” for optimized performance, and maybe those would not be obvious to intuition or casual analysis.
Anyone know if any teams ever do this sort of thing?
i think this depends on your intake, for example is you have an intake that picks up one cube at a time, your “sweet spot” may be different than if you had an intake that could pick up 3 at a time (stacked on top of each other).
I haven’t heard of teams doing that in a computer model, but the top teams always test dozens of variations on their real robots to fine tune optimal performance.
Assuming accuracy and precision is constant, and after working on an optimization problem to determine the speed of the lift vs weight of game pieces
I would say speed for high school and capacity for college.
I believe speed is more important in high school solely because the 15 second autonomous was so short. By exploiting speed, you can out-build your opponents and get the autonomous bonus. From there, you can slow down high capacity teams by ruining the pyramid and earn extra tempo by grabbing your own game pieces.
But then again, why not both? Transmissions have been done before.
Yes. The successful robots I have seen so far this season are both of the above, (as well as crazily fast).
I can’t see many more cubes than 3 being the maximum for most robots. 8 just seems like it would make a robot way to slow and unwieldy to score effectively with.
I think a mix between speed and a capacity of 2 or 3 cubes will probably be the most successful this year.
What do you thing the most successful capacity for skills will be? (no robots to knock over pyramid)
I think the higher the better within reason.
Mentioning skills did we determine if you can build both sky rises?
For college: yes
https://vexforum.com/t/answered-vexu-driver-and-programming-skills-skyrise-clarification/26573/1
For highschool: no
See rule RSC5 and likewise PSC5
At this point of the season it is hard for anyone to say the key factor. I used to favor capacity and speed. But after watching few videos, I can see how precise, efficient single object intake bots killed wobbly, struggling bots with 4 capacity. So I agree that precision and speed come first. If you can’t accurately dump that load of five, capacity means nothing.
This has been the case in past seasons. For example, matches like this one occur at early-season tournaments, because more complex and challenging robots take longer to fine-tune. As we know, the basic design of the blue robot went on to be THE most competitive design of that entire season. So, while the higher-capacity robots are losing in the early season, they may prevail as teams improve them over the course of the year.
I agree with fine tuning in the aspect. Make your design, and make it the best that it can be. Our Toss Up robot wasn’t necessarily the best robot overall, being that it cold not manipulate the big balls, but it was the most fine tuned and well driven as we finished it in 4 days and drove nearly the same thing for nine month. Listen to your drivers and programmers on what they want/think they need to be successful and build that, for each team it may be a little different. I must also agree though that accuracy is always the best policy. If you only score 10% of the time and are 2x faster than a robot who is 90% efficient he will beat you head to head every time.
Now i see why the robot without large ball manipulation can win the science division. Nine month, that’s what precision and practice it takes to become a champion.
Truly inspired, Martin, team 3921
Hope to see you at more GA tournaments! 
Assuming that accuracy is constant I would say that at least 5 cubes to fill the tall post would be ideal. But really as many as u can pick up without losing speed
Build early and drive lots, we had many many 100s of hours of driving on the robot. Blake could drive the robot like it was a third arm. I implore all the builders and programmers, listen to your drivers and find out what they are comfortable driving as well as look closely at the game, we determined if we were the best in the world at moving the bucky balls we could do well enough, we never lost a match in which we won auton and hung for 20 points. Mainly because we practiced all three of those things so much it was difficult to match our speed or efficiency.
Lol I am glad we were able to inspire someone else, the other teams from our school never were inspired sadly. Please message me if you need any help or advice, I am always happy to offer the help I can.
Unfortunately we have all graduated and moved on too our respective colleges, fortunately though our 5 year trek ended wonderfully for us, and we wont be at many competitions unless we are judging or refereeing or just observing, but I do hope we will see you there, and I whish you the best of luck in GA.
Please message me if you want any advice or want to send me a picture of the robot or as any questions. Best of Luck
Brian,
Coach and main strategist of 1961C
I would say evaluate how quickly your opponent de-scores the 5th, if he can just pop them right off and score right over top then maybe not the 5th as you may want it later to score elsewhere without having to go pick more up, but I agree the more at one time is best without sacrificing accuracy and speed. Especially without a limiting number on how many you can carry if you can find that balance and it is with carrying a lot… go for it…
It could be a strategic to cap the high goal. Because if the other team tries to descore it then they would be wasting time where they could be scoring more points on other posts. Then you can score more of your cubes. Just a thought