For worlds is it better to have a robot that can lift or a robot that is able to be lifted by any robot? and why?
Being able to control your own destiny is always the best. You won’t have to rely on others to accomplish your goals.
I would say it would be better to at least have a low lift that can be easily removed (or not) while still having that ability of being high lifted by others.
If you plan on having a definite high lift, it needs to be able to lift any robot.
Aside from this being impossible, I believe it mostly depends on which robot you think you would best build or have done most testing with over the season.
At worlds, best case scenario would be a 50/ 50 ratio between lifters and lefties. To be competitive you are going to have to be either really good at lifting or at being lifted (assuming you can do most everything else well). I would not try to build a robot that can both lift and be lifted. You are likely not going to be able to do either very well.
My opinion is that the winning alliance of worlds will need a lift, but they will also need a fest around the field robot. Most likely at the end of qualification matches the around the field robots are going to be at the top, if there is at least 8 lifters in the division, the field robots can pick the lifters and it will be good, maybe. at the North Texas State Championship, in the finals 4 of the 6 teams in finals were field robots one of the others was a defense/preload robot, and on a lifter, and the winning alliance robot had the 2 field robots with the preload/defense robot. But at worlds finals most likely it will be too close in the goals to rely on them, you may need a lifter.
what if you are both a lifting robot and a fielding robot? The field always scores more points, and then the lift ensures the win. I would think that if you are paired with another lifting robot, you should build a lift that is the bare minimum space wise so that you can still function as a field only robot as long as you don’t deploy your lift. Then you get lifted by the robot that does have it and it’s all said and done.
I agree. What my team plans on doing is building an all aluminum low lift on our fielding bot using 1 motor so that we can easily perform a low lift at any time, but also be really light despite it incase we are paired with a high lifter. A low lift should be able to be light enough and simple enough to not get in the way of anything else.