This may seem kind of outdated but what was the worst robot for mix and match, do not mention custom builds. Revolver was kind of bad but is okay,
The herobot.
This is a slight exaggeration, but I’ve seen a lot of teams with just a base/unmodified hero bot at comps. The herobot is designed as a starting point, which means that it’s not going to be the best robot out there if you just follow the instructions.
I agree, I’ve seen this a ton as well. two of the teams in my club are doing it for override. also this years hero bot has traction wheels on the outside and Omnis on the motors which feels couterproductive.
The hero bot serves a great purpose and is a starting point, and you can always pick on it for that. But that’s low-hanging fruit as far as I’m concerned. Depending on the support for the program at schools, even having the hero bot built is an achievement.
The “Ben Lipper Flipper” for Full Volume is a great example of a “bad robot.”
It does one thing, and if you tweak that design it could do it way faster than this one. But, for the game as a whole, it’s a bad design. You can score more points faster using other obvious designs.
And I’m not trying to disparage this robot or Mr. Lipper. I remember laughing out loud when I first saw this robot. It’s an interesting idea that he gave it a whirl and it probably came out exactly as he thought it would.
We did end up seeing one of these at states, though… 