Importance of Climbing
 

So with lots of teams having participated in regionals or at least having watched some other regionals, what value do you now place on climbing? Have you seen it make a big impact on winning alliances, or has it become a secondary feature to better shooting?

Personally at Orlando, dominant shooting could be beat out, as seen by the 50-pt climb that 4451 Robots Garage completed every time (I think). Their climb was huge, got them multiple awards, and regional finalists. We hope to perfect out climbing for South Florida in a few weeks and make a large impact.

So what have you seen? Is climbing important or not?

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

I think we've seen a few threads on this topic already. From what I saw in San Diego, it was far less important than accurate shooting. However, the 10 point hang was worth doing, it didn't take much time and the extra points were needed if the opposing alliance's robots all hang.

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

It depends on how fast you do it...if you spend the entire match climbing, then in my opinion you are hurting your alliance. If you can get the 50 point climb in 30 seconds or less, and either score or play defense the rest of the time, then you will be a huge asset to your alliance.

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

In New York, our alliance (694, 4797 and 3137) won in quarterfinals by outshooting an alliance with a 30-pt climber but weak shooters. We then won semifinals by putting up 20-30 climb points (10 each) along with shooting against an alliance of 3 amazing shooters.

tl;dr: Winning is about being able to adapt to any strategy by figuring out what is important on a match-by-match basis, not on a CD-thread-hypothetical basis.

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

Points are points. Doesn't matter how they're scored.

A 50 point climber/dumper that spends the whole game doing it is more valuable than the shooter who spends the whole game (including autonomous) scoring less than 50 points.

Any time less than 2 minutes required by the climber can be used by it to block the opposing alliance. A climber that takes 45 seconds to climb can spend half the match blocking the opposing shooters. Turning a 3-frisbee-cycle opposing robot into a 2-frisbee-cycle opposing robot (costing the opposing alliance 12 points) is the same thing as the climber scoring 12 points.

Obviously a dominant shooter has the potential to outscore a climber/dumper. Seeing how the average total alliance score after the first 3 weeks is less than 50 points, it's pretty obvious that the a typical shooter is scoring much less than 30 points total per game.

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

Umm where are you getting your data that the average total alliance is getting less than 50 pts per game? If you mean winning and losing you may be right, but this weekend at st. Joseph's those numbers seemed to be much higher than that. But then again we lost in semi finals scoring 108 and 113, so I may be a little biased.... :)

Peachtree Regional finals came down to climbing, lead change at the last second! Teams (4th seed, Red) 1683:4509:832 vs. (7th seed,Blue) 3489:4026:4080
Ref called three 10point climbs for Blue. Red had two successful 10point hangs. Red climb points were uncontested. But all three bots in blue were reviewed by ref team. Required a long discussion & Jan Spurlin (Head Ref at Peachtree) confirmed 30points, in favor for Blue. blue takes Championships by 97-88; congrats Category 5. And Jeremy Roberts from 4026. And that disc hucking 4080 bot from the feeder station. Killer alliance. Amazing match, we (1683) had a blast playing these finals matches.

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

At the Detroit district, having a 10 point climb was very important for winning...unless you could score 6-8 discs at the end while everyone is hanging *cough* 469 *cough*. We tried to counter that by hanging for 10 and shooting 4 while hanging...instead of countering, we just teamed up!

In conclusion, hanging is good, so is 469.

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

Oh, don't get me wrong hanging is good, but going for 30 is just too risky in my opinion. 10 is easy and should be done by all teams. Well, unless this happens....

http://imgur.com/r34BB3L

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

How were penalties called for this?

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

Our alliance was awarded 50 climb points. Two of us climbed for 10, the third member was awarded a full 30 pt climb. Only one was actually touching the red bot at the end of the match.

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

Was there a tech foul on red for violating G30?

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

We were awarded 23 foul points for that match per frc-spy. Not sure of the breakout. Tomorrow I will check with my student who went to the question box to get clarification.

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

At the NC. regional in the quarter finals the 6th seeded
alliance 3319,2642 and 3196 had 2 30 pt climbers and a 10pt for a total of 70pts. That was impressive!

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

I agree with 45Auto. Points are points. Ultimate Ascent is a high-scoring game, with alliance scores of 140 or more not uncommon. A good shooter can easily outscore a dedicated climber.

On the other hand, a balanced design combining a good shooter with a quick climb (30 s) can contribute significantly to its alliance's score.

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

At the Granite State Regional all members of the winning alliance had 10 pt hangs only. They were dominant shooters.

We lost in the semi-finals. The match score was 156 to 123. Climbing was not really a factor.

Re: Importance of Climbing
 

Dedicated 30 point climbers are only valuable (especially at the Championship level) when they can do so in 20-30 seconds. Most of the dedicated climbers we have seen almost immediately begin climbing taking themselves out of the match opening up the field and for many alliances taking out a very key defensive third pick.

At GSR our team was a dedicated 30 point climber. Our shooter wasn't up to par and slightly interfered with climbing so we took it off. We generally went for the pyramid around 65 seconds after playing defense to allow time to line up and 40 seconds to climb. For Pine Tree we are working to cut that time in half using smarter code so it is valuable for us to dedicate the time to climb rather than score discs. Target is to start climbing at 30 seconds left on the clock but we always can wait longer, score some discs, and settle for a 20 point climb.

Video of our climb can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGGiGnWC9hQ