I think hooks are still better for wall stakes though, as there are so many wall stake mechanisms with hooks. The redirect hook bucket tray seems really popular, as well as the backwards claw from 18522R which uses hook to redirect. Also even lifting intakes work fine with hook such as JHAWK and 81988Y. For hood, it seems harder to redirect with but its still possible.
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I’m not saying that there not possible but most of the highly reliable ones that are centered in the same mech as the mogo stakes are the hood based one. I’ve seen a few teams with hooks have a bit of issue with their wall stakes. There are ways to get around this that you mention, or just use a separate wall mech. I still think that overall the hook with bet the hood 9/10 times.
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I’m switching to hood primarily because it doesn’t require as precise as a mogo clamps 
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The stuck under the ladder part only happened because the robot got propped up on a ring. This should never happen under normal conditions (if you don’t drive into rings).
Yeah I would really only recommend hood for teams with motor mogo clamps or for teams with unreliable mobile goals
Recently I noticed that a-lot of teams are switching to hood does anyone who switched want to explain their reason?
The primary reason that I have heard is that it has less liability. On a hook bot, if the chain breaks, its done. It cant score. On a hood, you can have redundant chain systems which increase reliability.
This next reason applies to a roller series design, often called a smorg. Hooks can not score fluidly. The ring gets intaked, and it has to wait for the hook. On a roller series intake, it is somewhat fluid in nature, where there is no opportunity for pause throughout the entire system. (assuming it is built well)
Another incentive is that the hook design is very compatible with a simple redirect system, which meant that the esiest way to make a wall stake mech was to use a hook. Because of that, the hoods advantages over the hook did not outweigh the need to be able to score wallstakes. But as the season progressed, better ways of doing wallstakes with hood bots began to arise, which has begun to tip the balance, creating the accellerating transition to hoods that you observed.
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Wth does SMORG mean?
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People have found methods to double up chain on hook so that is not really a valid reasoning now.
I dont know if smorg is an acronym, but it is used to refer to an intake/scoring system made by having a series of flex wheel rollers to move the ring, in combination with a hood.
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What about having both? I saw this design online but I forgot what team it was and I’m thinking about modifying that design onto my team bot.
The hood intake has been more consistent so far and teams have had more time to make them post-Moa. Now, in fairness to hooks, they have been becoming more popular as well, since Lady Brown is becoming a popular wallstake mech, but other hood-based mechs are also on the rise, such as the 99% wallstake redirect and its variants.
Hook is probably faster but harder to build, while hood is really efficient and pretty simple to build. Hood is harder to tune but efficient if tuned properly.
Personally I prefer the Hood type. Some others teams I’ve seen have had issues with their hook intake for example the motor would get hot so the chain would not be moving as fast, and for what I understand of hooks is that design relies on the chain speed. When the chain slowed down that caused the hook to not fling over properly. With the hood intake even if the motor gets hot it should at least keep intaking the ring just a little slower. Another thing they’ve struggled with is that the ring would fling out at the transition point or just fly off instead of falling on the goal, but the hood intake doesn’t have a transition point for rings to fly out and has better control of the ring when it exits on a goal. Here is
an example of at least half of a hood intake.
i mightve replied earlier, but we changed our design. We are actually using both intake systems, with a split in the middle that houses an automatic color sorter. we are using flex wheels for the initial part, then switching to omniwheels so that the sideways moving chain of the color sorter can still pull out the rings, then after the color sorter we switch to the hook method, which allows the rings to be put on the mobile goal with ease.
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In my opinion, I think that the hood intake will be slightly better if perfectly tuned if you compare the Ex Machina 66475C robot, which uses a hood with other hooked intake robots. The ex machina one is just an example but my point is that if it is tuned well then the hood will be a lot smoother and more consistent compared to hook which can over fling if the speed of the chassis is increased or decreased suddenly.
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yeah. i totally agree. i was team Hook to start out but with all the new Hood tech that has come out hood has so much more potential than hook. i personally amd soing hood on my 24in vex U bot.
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My team is gonna do hood (with flaps) or a single hook intake like 1000A