Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

This is my 12th year in FIRST Robotics, and I'd thought the build had generally become somewhat routine, the games somewhat predicable, and I'd just about seen it all. But now in the third week of build season, I'm finding this very difficult. Even with the ability to rapidly make parts in-house and over a decade of experience of doing this, I'm finding myself doubting our abilities to get it all done by the deadline, and do everything well in this game, and keep the robot built to our standards of quality.

Over 2 weeks in and here's where we are:
Accurate prototype shooter.
Full welded steel pyramid about 90% constructed.
One goal and one feeder station constructed
All sprockets, bearing blocks, chain tensioners, and wheel axles machined
Gearbox designed
Prototype intake
Electronics mostly laid out, and wire routing planned
Base chassis mostly designed. Still need to design base pan.

Here's what scares me:
The climbing mechanism has not yet been designed for real in CAD
Neither has the shooter
Nor has the intake conveyor
Nor has the feeding mechanism
Nor has the storage area.
There are areas of our robot that could experience 600 lbs of force under certain circumstances.
All of the above I can see taking another full week to design.
And the really scary part, is I can envision a week straight of welding for 4 hours every night being necessary.

Fitting all this stuff into the new 112" frame perimeter has been a nightmare and a half. And I know there are others with more years in FIRST than myself who have mentioned the same difficulties.

If those of us with this much experience are having this much trouble with it, I fear for what the game will look like for teams of average standing. The teams who work out of a classroom or meet less than 20 hours per week are really going to struggle.

Is this the year one robot/team just can't realistically do it all?
Is combining the challenging game with the reduced size just too much to ask?
Is there any wayto be competitive at this without meeting every single day until midnight.

I've poured every neuron in my brain and dollar in my wallet into this over the past two weeks, and it doesn't seem any easier yet.

I think a lot of teams will really struggle this year, unless they decide to abandon any plans for hanging beyond 10 pts. The 20 and 30 point hangs will be very rare, especially for a robot that also shoots well.

Kudos to FIRST for really switching it up, but I feel this year has just taken a littletoo big of a step, to the point where the key members of a team are required to sideline the rest of their lives to be truly competitive in this sport. As a teacher, on top of my full time job, I've put in over 45 hours per week over each of the last two weeks (and so have some students) outside of the school day, and we're still behind. Being a real leader in this sport is a full time job, which is a lot on top of an already full time job.

I'm not saying I want an easier challenge, but if after 12 years and almost all the resources we could need, me finding it difficult makes me think it's terrifying if not impossible for many teams to do well in this year's game.

Anyone agree with any of the above?

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I agree that it's really tough to do it all. So we're just doing the easy stuff...and I think you can be pretty competitive if you concentrate on the easier parts of the game. Auto seems to be underrated compared to climbing, and the pick up and score thing sure seems a whole bunch easier than climbing, and has good point return. Missing out on 10 or 20 points by not wasting weeks designing and building a climber is the most sensible way to try to get it all done.

YMMV

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Difficult? Yeah.
Extremely difficult? Some parts.

Doable? It's been done. It's being done. This game is hard, hardest I've experienced, but it's completely doable. I think with this game teams had to cut down on their priorities and focus on doing a select few things really well instead of everything. As stated in one of the many 1114 white paper resources that I've read 1000 times, "If I had 30 unites of robot, I'd rather have 3 units of 10 rather than 6 unites of 5". While some very good teams in previous years could do everything and more with 10 units of robot, I think due to this year's challenges even all-star teams are cutting back on doing everything and focusing on being able to do a few things really well.

That being said, I still know a lot of people who are trying to do everything imaginable, and may succeed at it. Maybe you'll figure something out before the build season is over and make a kick-butt do everything robot. But on the off-chance you don't have an epiphany anytime soon, I think it would be a good idea to start focusing in on a few major priorities for your strategy, and once those are done look into making them better, and MAYBE after that look into adding those things you couldn't fit into the build season.

There are 3 weeks left. You're not alone. Most teams are behind schedule this year, ourselves included (we'll be cutting steel tomorrow for the first time). Make the best out of the time you have left, and make sure what you get at the end of it does whatever it does at 110% power.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

This year is super tough, and I love it! We are going for everything, and I'm very optimistic.

There will be very few robots that can do everything, but teams that specialize in a certain aspect of the game will do very well. I think the GDC did an excellent job with the game design this year, and we'll have some exciting gameplay.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

This is my 11th year, and this is definitely the hardest game to do everything in. There will be teams that do it. There are a lot of curve balls, but for most of the elite teams they are working on a 16 week build schedule anyway. By the time championship roles around we'll see some very impressive robots.

The new size requirements seem to make robots lighter. So even though we are putting climbing on hold, we have a few ideas of how we might be able to do it before Championship if were able to get there.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I agree with you 100%. Our team has more competent (and even brilliant) designers than it ever has had, and it's taking every ounce of mental effort we have just to design a robot. We were supposed to have a CAD done this weekend. Another deadline blown. A parent asked me today if we were on schedule, and I told her that the game was so hard that it blew our schedule out of the water.

Here's my opinion on making the typical powerhouse "do everything" robot. It can be done. But it won't. Not successfully. By do everything, I mean have a half court shooter and a pickup and a 30pt climber. There simply is not enough room on the robot to fit on all three without heavily compromising multiple aspects of the design. Maybe there's some game breaking design that I just haven't come up with, but I just don't think it's possible. Any team that tries will underdesign their robot to the degree that it will fail in competition.

We're managing to do 2 (or 1 1/2, depending on how you look at it) out of three. If we can pull it off, it will be a beastly robot. But if a mechanism breaks or fails to function as designed or we don't manufacture fast enough or if software doesn't work or if it's too hard to drive or if it breaks in competition it will be a failure. High risk and high reward.

A 30 pt is the hardest thing I have ever designed (and you should have seen our off season project...). We have a huge leg up, a very good prototype climber, but there is still a chance we will fail. Fitting it into that smaller frame size compounds the challenge.

Here's what I can take away: you don't need to do everything. I know a few people on very successful teams, and they won't be trying to do everything. This year will go down in FRC history as the hardest one ever. The robots that rise to the top will not be the ones that do everything poorly, but the ones that are breathtaking at one thing. Be that robot.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Has FIRST ever made a game that was easy to do?

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

This is my 9th season. I agree that the combination of game mechanics and robot constraints have made this game a designer's nightmare.

It has kept me up until 11pm and woke me at 6am most weekdays. I spent 24 hours in 3 days just coming up with a side & top profile sketch of the inner workings of our bot. The student CAD'ing the disc launcher isn't losing sleep, but is definitely stressed given the amount of work we're putting into CAD this year. Packing it into a smaller frame and (oh yea) under 27.5" is even worse.

Yet we're through the hard part now. Keep pushing, you'll find the same!

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I think this is the most true-to-life game in my FIRST history. I feel the GDC did a great job with this year's game, especially with the introduction of a new game piece and new robot size requirements.

The scoring objectives are not necessarily clear to which is most valuable. This game is all about developing game level objectives (how to play the game), setting priorities, determining trade space, and sacrificing methodology or mechanisms for the sake of achieving your team's gameplay objectives.

In my workplace, I work with extremely complex systems that in many cases are supposed to "do it all". This game is a prime example of how these systems are conceived and developed.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

My team does not meet as a class, has never met every day, and only occasionly meets late when needed. I would say we are always competitive. We have no intention of changing our meeting schedule now.*

Yes. 2008 and 2011 had extremely simple tasks that were required to score points. 2011 being 4 years after the previous tube game, with a behind the design book being available every team should have been able to score 2-3 tubes a match.

From my point of view 2010 was harder. the three challenges of the bump, possesing the ball and hanging that year were harder as a combined group. The low hanging fruit way to play this year, human loading, dumping then doing a 10 point hang will be viable for most teams and seed at most events.

The robot that does everything may not actually be viable this year due to space connstraints. It also may not be necessary. To me this is like 2004 where it was almost impossible to hang, hold the doubler ball and collect small balls on 1 robot. In the end only the best teams did it all, while other teams figured out one of those tasks was unnecessary if you played the right way.

*Disclaimer: I'm not heavily involved this year, after 11 years I have too much going on this year to spend much time with the team.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

This is year 9 for me. This is by far the most fun; oddly, the challenge seems much more doable for us this year. Not because the game is easy or because we've found the secret for a do-all bot; rather, because we accepted early on that we could pursue one of several viable scoring/utility options, and that by excelling in that narrow band we might have a chance in our region. I think lower tier teams that think through their options could become valuable and viable players. Not everyone will like that, and I'm sure the powerhouses will still do everything well, but I am excited to see what teams come up with this year.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

This game definitely seems to have been designed to force teams to compromise. Want an accurate shooter? Floor pickup? Storage and indexing for 4 discs? 30 point hanger? Pyramid goal scorer? Go under the low rung of the pyramid? Here, have a 112" frame perimeter and a 54" cylinder (oh, and your bumpers count too).

If you refuse to come to any compromises with your Ultimate Ascent robot design, you risk compromising everything (including your sanity).

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Stack Attack...

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

The more I read about the difficulties everyone is having, the happier I am my team said on day 1, for the first time in team history, that we weren't going to be doing everything.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

You are not alone, this one's tough.

Our initial strategy to climb for 30 and dump four for 20 more points was near unanimous by the team, and it looks like a lot of other on CD had the same idea. We knew we could only focus on one thing, we didn't have the resources to try to do it all, and were blinding by the big score. Two weeks later we realize just how hard, and how big a risk that strategy is, and two weeks have been lost.

Yesterday we scrapped all we had done prototyping and CADding a promising climbing mechanism and will be starting from square one with a shooter and a 10-point climb. The main concern was finishing in time to get some driver practice. The design challenge was considerable, requiring a unique chassis, and we weren't even trying to incorporate a good shooter.

Now we're hopeful to get a working, playing robot done before ship day, instead of machining like madmen trying to finish an unproven climbing mechanism by Tuesday night.

Bite off what you can chew I think is the lesson for this year.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

This is your problem. In my opinion, FIRST has spoiled teams by repeatedly giving us two game tasks that can be combined together somewhat easily by the mid to top tier, so "do everything" has been an okay strategy. I don't think that's the case this year for many teams. Maybe the elite can do everything, but otherwise you've gotta specialize, or you'll just end up wasting time spreading yourself too thin.

How many teams "did everything well" in 2004? Not many. It's a little like that year in my mind. I hoped this game was hard enough that teams would recognize "doing everything" to be a bad idea. Paradoxically, the teams intimidated by the challenge into aiming lower will do *better* this year than they would in an "easier" year where they tried to do more.

If you're a classroom team working a few hours a week, why, why, WHY would you try to do everything!?!? It sounds like teams have bit off more than they can chew. For their benefit, I hope they spit something out sooner rather than later...

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Quoted for truth. Look at the robot in 3 days design, and ask yourself if what you're designing is better, then compare the risks you are taking in complexity. We are benchmarking everything we do against that robot, asking 'will we score more than that robot with this feature, and how likely is this feature's complexity to cause problems'. If you can't reliably beat the 3 day robot with a given feature, ask yourself why you're using it.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I aboslutely understand where you are coming from. I am a 6th year coach (with no engineering background except what I have learned in FIRST). Up until this year I had 1 engineer that worked with us (this year we finally have 5). I am the only coach and because we work out of my classroom I can't leave the kids with the engineer while I go pick up parts/supplies etc. (district rules). I am also a full-time teacher (4 class preps a day as I teach 4 different classes) and I don't know what insanity inspired me to do it but I returned to college this semester so tack on 2 senior level college classes to build/competition season.

We are what you would probably call an 'average' team but this is something we recognize and accept at this point in our development and it is mainly due to limited resources. It was with this in mind that we decided to focus all of our energy and talent on one aspect of the game. We are not financially able to attend more than one regional and know that it is our one shot at making championships but with a powerhouse field (Robonauts, Robowranglers, Cryptonite, Texas Torque, and Kaos just to name a few) making championships is difficult at best for teams like ours.

Is this the year your team focuses one doing one thing really well? Who knows, that's something you guys have to decide together but as far as the killer schedule and money that goes with this I absolutely understand where you are. All you can do is dig deep and know that there are other coaches in the same boat you are and we are all paddling together (or bailing the water out in some cases :p ). Know that you have our moral support and that at the end of the day, no matter what your team accomlishes, you are doing a great thing for kids and are admired by many.

If you ever just need to vent or bang your head against the wall (while wearing saftey glasses of course ::safety:: ) PM me and I will be happy to listen and/or offer advice.

Keep your chin up, your safety glasses on, and don't let the magic smoke out of the electrical components and you'll do just fine :)

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Definitely the toughest game in 10 years. The frisbees are easier than expected, but the pyramid is so far beyond a single bar hang.

Not that I have heard anyone complaining, but we should really relish the opportunity to make hard decisions. If a team doesn't want sacrifice 30 points for floor pick-up (for example) then the team has no right to say the game is too hard.

We embrace this game, because success will say a lot about the team.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

We work out of a classroom and still are having great success this year, it is only what you make of it. Perks of being a Michigan team, plenty of teams to help you!

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I'm a 5th year coach -- but of a rookie team at a new school. We're a technical school, so having some kids who know how to run equipment is great - but we're working pretty heavily with the KOP materials, some AndyMark products, and thankful a partner organization offered us access to a press brake to fold sheet aluminum in fun and interesting ways.

Our shooter is prototyped and now in CAD. Chassis is 70% prototyped and is in CAD. Climbing mechanism is a 'maybe if it fits' item that we're not viewing as essential.

I saw this game as throwing those 'swiss-army knife' teams a serious problem. Those who pull it off will of course be impressive, but many of us will focus on one aspect of the game and hope to build alliances that are multi-task capable instead of trying to do it all ourselves.

Best to everyone.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I think this game is just asking a lot.
But I believe they made this game because it's tricky.
In my opinion, the easy parts are whats going to determine the game.
FIRST knows its hard, they know its nearly impossible, and thats why they chose it.

In years past its the end game that makes you win (mini bot, bridge, ect) But I think this time they are trying to trick you.

Since the game is going to have such a low score, a simple dumper robot getting the 1 point goal will be the difference between winning a regional and ranking low.

Just an opinion.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

This game is absolutely *NOT* too difficult, but many teams will make it too difficult by biting off more than they can chew.

This game has more forced compromises in it than any I've ever been involved with, to be sure... And I'm not entirely convinced that we compromised the right way. Time will tell!

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I believe this is a hard competition. Last year our team started to embrace CAD and CNC as never before and it helped a lot in the end though too late to pull us through. This year, we went in assuming CAD and CNC was the default and it's helped a lot with our design.

We are going for a 30pt climb, 20 pt dump into the top of the pyramid, and 6pt autonomous dump in the lowest goal. We are also designing our dump system to support dumping into the lowest goal during the match as the time in the match permits. Our design is light-ish (90-95 lbs all up weight with bumpers and battery) and very fast due to gearing and weight.

I have total confidence in our design because it's not too complicated and uses super reliable components. With that said, getting it actually into CAD has proven to be a nightmare. The "precision" required in the design far exceeds anything our team has done before. This isn't due to tight tolerances but due to compound angles and strength requirements. It's easy to visualize but proven beastly difficult to get into CAD inside the dimensions of the robot. Ultimately, our entire robot will likely be CNC machined with welded gussets. It will certainly be pretty :)

The biggest thing that's helped us this year is one of our mentors repeatedly making sure we focus on the climbing system first and build the rest of the robot around it. The climber is large and sophisticated so everything else needs to be positioned around the climber to make things work. It makes for a very attractive design and has really helped us focus as needed. I imagine this is good advice for any team trying to build a specific-task robot.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

The hardest part of watching videos online is reminding the team that we can't compromise our strategy just to get "XYZ" function into the robot.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Fortunately, climbing for 30 is the first and foremost part of our strategy.

-Mike

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

This seems to be the only year where I have seen a number of teams "putting all their eggs in one basket". I really hope that these teams do succeed since pulling off the 30 point climb since it is so technically challenging and so cool, like 118's bridge balancing mechanism. Our team, being only in it's second year, chose two modest forms of scoring so we would not be left with zero capabilities after a single failure.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

My favorite thing about this year's game is that it is quite obviously difficult. Just go on youtube and look for videos of dogs trying to pick up frisbees. Shooting frisbees is also non-obvious, and just thinking about climbing the period makes my head hurt. This makes it easier for smart teams to say, "Well, that's probably not worth our time" and build a robot that ignores one portion of a game.

Games that are non-obviously difficult (Breakaway) are less exciting to watch. Teams try and do everything because they think it will be easy, and then the devil is in the details and none of the mechanisms really work.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Can I put in my nomination for understatement of the year?

This is undoubtably the hardest game I have seen in my FIRST career. And I have never been more excited/terrified to see the robot go from concept to completion.

I've also never been more proud of the FIRST community during build. The amount of sharing and openess from teams who find a solution that looks like it works is incredible this year.
I appreciate people like the Ri3D guys and the people at TwentyFourBlog making the case that your robot doesn't have to do everything to be a solid competitive robot. These resources could not have started on a better year.

This game is gonna be tough, but everytime FIRST has raised the bar the vast majority of teams have been able to clear it and then they turn around and lift up those who didn't quite make it. I expect nothing less this year.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I would agree with many of the comments made here, having done this since 2000. I think there have been hard years in the past including 2005 when we were trying to manage tetras and trying to see stacks of 9-10, we have never gone back to that complicated a game piece.

Except I guess the pyramid in the middle is just a big gigantic tetra... with its top chopped off.

I actually think because of all the experience and team sharing going on this year, with the shooter that level of competition will be notched up. It will not be enough just to have a really good frisbee shooter, robot in 3 days proved that a good shooter is not difficult to achieve this year if thought through and researched. A lot of teams have been helping and we have also been stealing ideas of shooter designs from other teams and prototyping.

However, because of what i have said above the differentiating factor this year will be climbing or a 469 (2010) type strategy if someone figures out how to shoot the full court from sitting in their home zone and just unloading 45 discs in a minute or so. (which i also think we will see designs for this year, effectiveness is yet tbd)

good luck we are just about half way there.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I agree that this challenge is one of the hardest yet, but isn't that the point of FIRST? If the objective is to train students for a realistic work experience, then this game is perfect. In the real world, problems don't always have easy answers and long deadlines, and you have to work past that.
In short, bravo FIRST, and thank you for a very difficult challenge.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I really hope to see another team (rookie or not) create a giant net that extends to the full 84 in mark so that they can stop teams like this. Guarantee in a regional where this strategy is prevalent and benefiting a team, the alliance that wins will have a robot just to do this...

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

We're looking at the possibility of rigging our robot to do just that, just in case, if we have the weight...

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Same :)

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

my team has been having some trouble with the climbing portions so where it was once a student/mentor project. Now it is a full mentor project that has taken the last week up:confused:

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I absolutely agree with you Dave... I read your post and feel so much in the same boat as you, it actually made me feel a bit better. I've been at this for 13 years, have a good amount of resources... and don't feel we will make our benchmarks for this year... Each year we seem to do a bit better with building the bot plan, but it has been a real switch up this year. It is a good thing, but seriously, 112 perimeter is just so limiting. We will get something together, but the dream of being better that the 3 day bot, is sadly fading. I'm glad they did the 3daybot, but now we all compare our bots to it. If you can't make it better than that, why not just build that bot?

And there in lies a problem we have on our team... we have a few mentor resources, but not enough to get through these problems with design. So ultimately we are having to forgo either floor pickup, 20 pt hang, or both.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Dave, Doug and others -

Thanks for making us all feel a little bit better and a little less alone.

This game would have been challenging without the 112 in. and 54 in. limits.

It's made my brain hurt.

- Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Join the club David.
Some of our students in our program average over 300+ hours outside of school during build season. This isnt an exaggeration, and we had some crazy ones put in 400 in the past.
The problem with that is an adult is here also.
Adding the whole money issue for us and having families (I'm a daddy and husband), makes it even more so.

There are pressures to not tone it down, let some things go, and outright doing less.

Donors give more when you do more, which indirectly affects your success as we all focus on robot building and student learning experiences.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Hmmm. I'm sure someone will do that...

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

The number of people who mentor our team has exploded over the last 4 years. I directly attribute our team competitiveness to gaining some incredibly talented mentors in just about every field, from business to spirit.

Even with that many mentors, none of us have time to get everything done. My 3 kids now ask me if I'm going to work, or to robotics. They both consume equal amounts of time right now.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

This is my 5th year apart of F.I.R.S.T 4th as a mentor and I would say this game is hard to an extent. Ultimate Accent has mechanics designed into the game that no one in first has ever seen or can look at other examples in previous games. The last two games most teams could accomplish everything. For example 2012 Bridge balancing could be done if you had just a capable drive-train. The end game currently requires a lot of thought and F.I.R.S.T is now making you make trade offs or think of the game in an entirely different way than the usual. As far as resources and time spent it is pretty heavy this season the question is how many teams can rise to the occasion and figure out how to play this game effectively to the fullest. I know my team is working though the weeks and are learning all the time. I think this is what FRC is about and is why I am still apart of it.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Yes this year is definitely hard. Right now, week 3 and we don't even have some key components settled out. We figured that 30 points might sound like a good thing to do, but there are too many variables that play a huge factor. What if the robot falls off? How much space are we willing to exchange for a climbing mechanism? We realize that the top scorers will have a successful 3rd level climb; if an alliance with three teams were do the same, they will be almost invincible. Also by reading throughout cd, many teams don't seem like they are picking off the ground, just feeder. Our goal is to make a great bot, with a fast, simple intake mechanism from the floor, and a precise shooter. But so far some stuff is looking really dismal atm.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I quit

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Lucky. My students won't let me. :D

Just kidding. But man..... I know we can do this, but this season is just going to be one for the books. This is a game where to do it really well, you do FIRST and nothing else. It consumes you. The reward will be when this thing all comes together and works. The difficulty in design for this is a big step up for us. I like it, but it's scary.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Couldn't agree more. Goes back to one of FIRST's mottos: "Its the hardest fun you'll ever have"

This season is different from last year. Maybe its because its my 2nd year now and I know how things go, but I definitely have a lot more stress than I did last year. I feel like this game is a lot less definite. The season more unknown. Last year, you could pretty well predict how well you were going to do. We could tip the bridge very well and shoot ok, so I figured we'd have an ok year, and we did. This year, Im seeing a lot less teams that build these all-in-one bots that are very successful at every area of the game. Sure, they'll be there, but not like in previous years. And because the aim of the season is no longer to do everything well, how do I exactly qualify at what point of functionality our robot will be successful?

If we go for the 30 points, I could see that making us a pretty good team, giving a guaranteed 30 points + some more every time. Or we could show up and everyone can get to the third level, and all of a sudden we're just a average bot that gets 30 points in a gave where 60+ points is the norm.

Its just a different gameplay, and I cant decide if is more or less fun than before :D

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I agree that this challenge is the most difficult to solve completely as compared to what I've seen in my 11 seasons with FRC. I will not be surprised to see teams which find a complete solution. We applied the strategy development process which Karthik trains; it drove us to a decision early.

We evaluated the scoring options and have opted to focus on scoring discs in the high goal and hang for 10 points as our highest priority and then work in the ability to pick from the floor and score high as weight and space allow.

The additional 20 or 30 points (if the GDC decides to increase the value) did not seem worth the effort and risks.

I am really looking forward to seeing all of the solutions. I think this is going to become my favorite game of all time.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Not only is this game difficult to design for, it's difficult to analyze. Every time I look at the score distribution I think one of two thoughts:

"Wow the pyramid is really overpowered"

and

"Wow the pyramid is really underpowered"

I think this arises from an extreme difficulty of estimating how other teams will be able to play this game. Disc shooters we've seen on CD are all pretty good, reasonably accurate. I haven't seen any good way of getting the discs into the shooters prototyped nor have I seen any climbers beyond level one. But if the shooters are as good as is to be believed from what we've seen so far, the effort spent to climb seems like a big waste: If your climber takes 30 seconds and you can score one trip of white discs and climb for 10 in that time, then you've just scored 22 points making that very complex and fancy climber worth 8 points.

But on the other hand, I wonder if it will turn out like Rebound Rumble where some factors arise (ball squishiness for instance) -- maybe this year it will be getting the disc into your shooter, or your drive train not getting caught on them as you drive around the field -- that will cause the average disc score to go down precipitously. Maybe it will be the rampant defense that is conceivable. In this case, climbing is worth it no doubt.

But that's the whole issue: I don't know which will end up happening. We chose one of these and moved on. I think this game is an excellently designed one, at least for the difficulty of analyzing it. Every time you start thinking one way is definitively better than another, something (cough cough colored discs) comes out and proves you wrong and brings both ideas back to balance.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

This year's game most certainly is interesting, and the end game is something I don't think we've ever seen, but I'm not sure to say it's the most difficult or even too difficult, but rather say that last year was likely one of the (relatively) easier games that FIRST has come up with. This year's game piece is entirely new, and I will admit, I was skeptical at first at being able to fire frisbees, but now I'm more confident in our ability to do so accurately. Compared to last year, with a very similar game piece to 2006, and somewhat similar end games to 2001 and 2006, I think this year's game is certainly more difficult than 2012, but I don't want to say it's too difficult, just this past year we were given an easy game and now we're thrown into a harder one.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I would say it's neither. Don't be surprised if it is a good balance this year between the three portions of the game.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Interestingly enough, I think it was very easy to analyze the "killer robot" application -- a great shooter with floor pickup as well as slot loading, that can climb and score disks in the top of the pyramid. The hard part is translating that down into a doable robot -- which functions are critical, which are not?

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Well, arguably in every game the 'killer' robot would be the one that can do literally everything. It's just that some years those functionalities are compatible (tube hanging and minibot scoring, ball scoring and bridge balancing, etc...) whereas this year requires a true tradeoff for all teams but the very elite. Like I said, what makes this so difficult is the difficulty of estimating what your opponents will be able to do.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

So true. I really have no idea how well we're doing with our progress and how well others will do too.

I don't like it :D

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I don't think it matters too much what your opponents will do. You do the best you can do, and that depends on what your team is capable of doing. As I see it, the "easy points" come from flinging Frisbees into the higher point goals, and from a low hang. The difficult points come from climbing, and dumping Frisbees into the pyramid goal.

But we don't all see things the same.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I believe the key to this competition is to choose your strategies and be consistent.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I give you as a counter-example FRC71 in 2002. Arguably one of the most dominant robot to ever exist in FRC. It didn't touch the balls in that game at all. (video)

I've said it time and time again, a ROBOT does not win championships. An ALLIANCE does. Build a robot that does it's job the best and build out an alliance that plays the game the best.

I'm glad this game is "hard" I think that it forces us to make choices for the first time in many years.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Agreed. In my eyes, the last game that really made you make a conscious "We're-gonna-do-that!" decision was FIRST Overdrive. Freshmen that played that game are now sophomores in college.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I think one of the difficult things about this game is that it's fairly unique, and that uniqueness makes it hard to predict how other teams are going to play this game. That the time allocated vs everything you can do makes this game more difficult than the others I've participated in.

It'll be nice not to see robots that look really generic, unlike last year.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Overdrive looks the simplest, but FIRST added the aspect of the track balls to complicate it, so I don't think you can support an argument that FIRST has made games that are too easy.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I agree with Andrew. In fact, a better video to prove your point would have been the Einstein finals for that year when Team Hammond (FIRST Team 71) was finally stopped in the finals when the opponents were able to race across the field and knock them off target. 71's ally, FIRST Team 173 Team Rage vacuumed almost all of the balls on the field and scored enough points to win the nationals--AS ALLIES.

It seems as though the GDC hit on the perfect formula for this game. There are aspects that understaffed and underfunded rookie teams can still do well (shoot frisbees) while giving elite teams a run for their money if they wish to continue being the "Do everything very well" type of robots. The middle of the road robots can excel in one or the other and still make themselves very competitive by doing so.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I feel like the challenge in this game isn't that every task is too difficult to perform, it's a combination of the game being hard to predict and parts of the game being too enticing.

The full court shot is a great example of this. At first glance, it seems as though it is your team's pathway to having an absolutely amazing robot. But it is hard to tell if it will work in competition, mainly because of defense. A big question for anybody considering a full court shot is "will there be robots who can block us?". Depending on the answer, you could either have the next 469 bot from 2010 or a strategy that only works if you have a lucky match schedule.

Another thing that is hard to predict is how many disks will be on the floor, which will affect decisions on whether to have a pick up system or not. The 30 point climb is an enticing thing, but many teams probably do not have the resources to achieve it*. Even 341 said in their vlog that they were struggling with it.

So is this a difficult game? Depends on your definition on difficult. I think that by far the most difficult part of this game is deciding what your robot will do.

*Of course, unless there is some super easy climbing method which I am just oblivious to.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

So far, all my team is compromising is sanity :P
Every weekday 2-10:30pm and weekends all day, my (small) team has been meeting in a garage and living room. We all hope it works out. Good luck to all you teams out there, may your robot reflect your design choices accurately!

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

And after you can do all that on a physical robot, try all those abilities in a single 2:15 match...

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Well, this year has really just been laid out for my team. We are doing everything right it seems, we have a 30 ptn climber, and an accurate shooter as well as many style points on this years bot. Most years we struggle, but this year its just easier. We thought out many designs and we just seemed to pick the right ones. We are ahead of schedule this year, for the first year ever.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Got a video of the climber? Thus far only a single 30pt climber has been posted and it wasn't fully working yet so I'm curious to see what you have if you are willing to share it.

This has been a hard year for us, solid designs but incredibly slow going on everything else. We will be machining all this week at our current rate. Hopefully we will be climbing in some form by this weekend but I'm a little skeptical at this rate. I'm getting very nervous about time...

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

No video just yet, we've only tested it with the climbing mechanism clamped onto the base. And it sort of worked, we have bugs still to get it working 100%. But we use the corner ;) The climber is our #1 priority this year, so we've made a huge effort to make sure it works. We'll have a video once build season ends probably, mainly because our bot won't be complete until then and I'm sure you know how I feel on that haha. The sooner the better!

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I hope 2014 is 2x as hard :P

difficulty makes it that much more fun at competition (yes, spending 72 hours cranking away in the pits does count as "fun" in my book)

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

The trade-off is, of course, that you make it that much more daunting for new teams, which already have a rough time of it.

The one thing I'd like to see this next year is a field containing only elements that are easily mocked up to acceptable accuracy with commonly available resources. It's not good game design when a large fraction of the teams have no way of seeing if their mechanisms really work until they get to a bona-fide practice field of some sort. 2008 was a good example of this done right, as were 2010 and 2011. 2013 was most definitely not; that pyramid was a killer.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I agree in every point. especially the pyramid thing. that was pretty ridiculous. It would be tricky for new teams to do stuff if it was much harder.

What I fail to understand is this: Sometimes I see rookie teams with EXACTLY a kit bot, the same one they built at kickoff! they did absolutely nothing at all in 6 weeks, except make bumpers. I understand some teams have trouble here and there, but c'mon, screw on a 2x4 or something!

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I will admit, I used to think along these lines, back when I was a student on 449; I'd walk down the "rookie row" at competitions and wonder, "how could you only come up with this?" It's not such a mystery to me, anymore. Here's a thought experiment that might make it easier to understand:

Imagine that you are a on a rookie team, with no mentors with FIRST experience. All you have is the kit of parts and what materials are available on the FIRST website. No one on the team has any real conception of what's involved in building an FRC robot; not of the time required, of the fundamentals of design, strategy, nothing. You lack raw materials, a machine shop, a working knowledge of the control system. What do you do in six weeks?

From what I've seen, unfortunately, this is the reality for many rookie teams; they get started with no idea of what they're getting into, and it's as much as they can handle to field something which moves at competition. Can you imagine getting a handle on the robot control system with no prior electronics experience, simply by trudging through FIRST's arcane documentation? Yes, there are other resources available, of course - and teams that take advantage of them will be much better for it - but not every team knows about them.

Last year was my first year mentoring a rookie team (4464), and it was eye-opening. Even more eye-opening was the DC team to whom we opened our build space halfway through build season, which consisted, essentially, of 5 students and a high-school teacher with no FRC experience. Had we not done this, and provided instruction, they would not have fielded a working robot; we had our members show their team, step-by-step, how to assemble a working kitbot, control system and all. Our team had been fortunate enough to have a reasonable preseason training program, and the students were familiar with all of the important parts before kickoff. Their team hadn't.

I'm currently involved, in a small capacity, with helping two new teams get off the ground this preseason. Both of these teams have access to people with FRC experience, but it's increasingly clear to me that were they not so fortunate, simply fielding a moving robot itself would be a reasonable achievement.

It's easy to become jaded when you've been with a successful team; the basics seem simple, and it's hard to imagine how anyone couldn't manage them. Take away the resources, the knowledge, all of the experience in the working memory of your team, however, and how much would you realistically be able to do?

Note that this is not meant to say that all (or even most) rookie teams are not capable of doing well (4464's first season was about as successful as I could have dreamed), rather that it's easy to overlook the things which enable that success, and to overlook how a team might end up without them.

The obvious question to ask, then, is how can we improve this? The fundamental problem, it seems to me, is one of "you don't know what you don't know." A rookie team with no conception of the demands of successfully fielding a FRC robot, of the magnitude of the difficulty, doesn't know that they should be devoting large amounts of time to looking through available resources and preparing. I don't think the problem is fundamentally that the resources don't exist for rookie teams (though certainly there could be more of them), but that they're not made visible enough and it's too easy for people to start a team when they really don't have the resources to succeed. A lot of this fundamentally stems from human psychology and cognitive biases which we all deal with; we tend to be wildly over-optimistic in our judgments, and it shows markedly in situations like this.

I could go on, but this is getting sort of long-winded and I think I've covered the crux of what I wanted to say. I will note that I do not think FIRST, on the whole, should be made all that much easier; the challenge is necessary for the proper functioning of the whole system. I think any improvement in this area has to come from better communication of the magnitude of that difficulty.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

It just takes time and committed students. Not to say a rookie team can't come out of the gates, it's just hard. Time is a team's greatest asset for garnering community and dedicated student support.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

My first year in FIRST I was the only mentor of brand-new team 827, and my college education (particle physics and Deaf education) left me extremely lacking in practical know-how--so much so that I went back to my undergraduate physics department and gave a presentation on the many things I left there (as a B+ student) not knowing. My students knew nothing. We were in way over our heads, and had no idea what we were getting into.

We didn't know where to look to get ideas, we didn't know where to look to get help, and we didn't know what we didn't know. Were it not for the mentorship of a nearby team, we would not have fielded a functional robot. As it was, we fielded a robot that could score some points and do okay.

FIRST is hard, and FIRST is particularly hard on rookies, who are trying to learn everything from the ground up. This is why I believe that the single best thing a team can provide to rookies is mentorship and training.

Switching gears for a moment, Ri3D shows that a dedicated group with some decent tools and general know-how can make a robot much more functional than your average rookies tend to make; I think the program is awesome as "you can do it!" inspiration and a crash-course on prototyping.

Where this applies to game difficulty is, IMO, reflected in a post of mine much earlier in this thread that somebody spotlighted: this game wasn't too difficult, but many teams (including ours) made it too difficult by biting off more than they could chew.

A rookie team without the resources to build a pyramid probably shouldn't be attempting anything more than a 10-point climb anyway.

That said, it would be nice to not have field elements that are so huge and that can't be assembled/disassembled (because let's be honest, the bolt-together pyramids weren't stable enough for real use); most teams don't have dedicated build space with room for a field, and it's hard to share space with a 1000-square-foot pyramid.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Certainly not to detract from your statements, but let it be known that the pyramid is 100 square feet, not 1,000.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I meant 1000 cubic feet, whoops! (And yeah, that's an estimate).

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

B*h*(1/3) ... 333 cu ft. ;)

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

We made a quarter pyramid, to spec, with some 2x4s and metal pipe. Wasn't terribly difficult to do.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-W...it?usp=sharing

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Our space for storing a pyramid shrunk between last year and this year. If this year has something that large, we will be scratching our heads as we try to figure out where to store it and practice on it.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

Sure, but that leaves out the corner.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

While true it is something you have to take into consideration while designing your robot. If you can't replicate the field to the level you need, don't make a mechanism that requires perfect field elements. This goes for hard challenges and easy challenges. A lot of teams got burned this past year with passive 10 point climbers that didn't get them off the ground because on some fields there were and inch plus of difference between the low bars on the two pyramids. I will say I am not a fan of it but it happens and you have to deal with it. I remember in 2011 some teams who couldn't deploy their minibots because they followed the only made their deployments go out the "perfect distance" and were 1/4in-1/2in away from the pole.

Our team was fortunate to have a sponsor build us a pyramid however a week before our regional we realized it was off by a lot. This did have an effect on making sure our design worked since our pyramid was now smaller so we couldn't tell if we would violate multiple levels. We analyzed the problems and solved them as best we could without a real pyramid to practice on.

In the end our climber was probably the one that had the most room for error while climbing. We could be off by as much as a foot when we started on level 1 and still make it to the level 3 by adding teflon tape under our hooks so we could slide on the bar. It also only needed one of the two pawls to be hooked on a bar to keep climbing. This wasn't our original design but it worked really well in our favor because the combination of the two meant we could go from shooting to on level one in two seconds.

Looking back we could have gotten away with a basic 2x4 and pipe frame because we were a side climber. One of the reasons we didn't go with a corner climb was how precise our designs had to be in order to get it to work. If the pyramid in our shop or on the field was off it wouldn't work.

You do have a great point of newer teams. It is daunting but even your own team probably had a rough start. Rookies need veteran teams and members to help them out. When 3467 was started we had a really strong mentor base to begin with that included over 15 years of FRC experience among four adults. Several of them were previously involved with team 241 the Pinkerton Astros and I remember coaches and mentors from 241 checking up on us to see how we were doing, sharing ideas, evaluating our design, etc. This support is key even for rookies who might seem to have it all together. Other teams in our area helped us out both before, during, and after our first season and still to this day: 501, 1058, and 1519.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

In terms of gym space, it might as well be a cube. :p

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I'd like to think about this question in retrospect, long after I tore my hair out trying to come up with solutions in week 4-5.

The game's challenges were distinctly tiered and increasingly difficult. In my opinion, here's the list of tasks this year, from least to most difficult:

• 1 Pt Dump - This was possibly the easiest task FIRST has given teams since 2008's laps. A garbage bin and a lever and you could put points on the board. With non-returnable game pieces and a deceptively easy 2 and 3 point shot, there was not a lot of reason to do this.
• 2 Point Shot - The goal is almost bigger than some of this year's robots. Very few teams could consistently get discs out of their robot but not consistently hit the 2 point goal. This was plenty viable in early regionals but fell out of favor as disc supply became limited.
• Human Loading - Depending on the hopper and robot design this also was not very hard. Doing it well was not universally achieved, but often it was as easy as adding some lexan to a bucket.
• 10 Climb - This was only "hard" because of field tolerances. As long as teams had an adjustable mechanism / mount, hanging was as simple as a pair of pneumatic pistons or a passive system.
• 3 Point Shot - This is probably the first challenging aspect of this design problem, yet it was still quite easy to accomplish. The biggest difficulty was getting shots to fire at a consistent height, which required attentive mechanical design. Other than that, not even speed control was a requirement to repeatably score 3's.
• Floor Pickup - This is where the game starts to get challenging, especially if you tried for a double wide intake. This game piece was harder to pick up than a ball and pickup required extensive prototyping. It's no coincidence that this functionality was where teams who did too much started to choke - a bad floor pickup without a human load solution was the bane of many teams this year. Even teams with good floor pickup could rarely use it to score more quickly than a human load shooter excluding FCSes
• 20 Climb - 20 was nontrivially easier than 30 points as the pyramid was still pretty wide at this level. Still, many of the challenges of thirty point climbing applied here, and the effort to reward ratio was not enough unless teams incorporated the pyramid goal.
• Pyramid Goal - Very hard to hit from the floor, not hard to hit while climbing but obviously climbing had its own set of extreme difficulty.
• 30 Climb - An entire thread could be written on how hard climbing was.

This game was pretty unique in that it was exactly as hard as you decided it should be. In 2012, 2011, 2010 to some extent, everyone had basically the same one or two tasks to complete, and thus difficulty was more constant. In this game, a team building a 10 point hanging human load cycler could have a very smooth build season while a 30 point climbing floor pickup robot was incredibly difficult for even the greatest teams in FRC. Additionally, the easier cycling robot was often *more* competitive than some teams with climbers or floor pickups.

The key to mastering this game, more than any other in recent memory, was to honestly evaluate your team's resources, prototype well, and build within your means. Far more teams aimed too high than too low. The OP's team is an example of this: They ended up fielding a floor / human loading 10 point cycler that was pretty good, but I bet if they had abandoned climbing from the get-go they would have been even better at floor pickup / shooting.

Re: Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?
 

I see it as the the game having a wider than normal RANGE of difficulty, not that the game itself was more difficult or too difficult. As FRC grows to a very large population, I think games with many layers of difficulty are beneficial in helping the competiton sort out teams on the basis of engineering achievement. Analogy: Making the outer diameter of the bulls-eye target bigger, and the center bulls-eye smaller, so there is room for more arrows while some still hit the mark.

After quick analysis of the game this year, we were quite struck by the unusually large opportuntiy for autonomous points, without any special skills not already beneficial for the core game. 42 points just laying there in a known location? Hello! Our approach was to focus first on making sure we had an excellent shooter, while always thinking ahead to how we might load it with 2 discs laying side by side on the floor. Striving for this ability would only enhance our teleop skills. As with many challanges, the solution was pretty simple after leaving room for it and giving it enough time to emerge.

Climbing for 30 was not a serious goal until very late in the build, but we had one student who was determined to make it happen, so we struggled to save design space in two narrow margins that might accomodate it if it was solved, which it eventually was.

Tackling a design challenge like this game with many layers of difficulty can seem unreasonably difficult at first. So you start with what you know is essential, with an eye forward to what you hope for, leave space for what might be possible, and then have faith in yourself. They say time heals all wounds. It also solves all problems, if you let it. Break it down, tackle one piece at a time, leave yourself options, trust your future abilities. That's how big difficult stuff gets done.