What has surprised you this year?
 

I know it isn't over yet but this should give us something good to talk about while we wait for divisions!

So the question is, what part of Ultimate Ascent has surprised you? What did you get wrong in your initial strategy phase?

For me, I certainly didn't think there would be nearly the number of good full court shooters. I'm also ashamed to say that I horribly underestimated the importance of traversing underneath the pyramid.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

Like many other teams, we underestimated the difficulty of building a 30-point climbing mechanism and wasted a significant amount of build season trying to develop one.

[More comments to come if I feel more awake later]

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

In short, the scores this year. I did not expect the 200 point barrier to be broken until at the very least MSC, if not champs or IRI.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I didn't think that there would be a robot that could both 30 point climb and ground feed.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I was really surprised by the way teams got Frisbees from the floor right side up. This year has been the first game piece in a while that requires a little engineering to make sure it is going to shoot right. You don't need to worry about that with a ball.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

30 Point ____?

Climb?

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

Something that I severely underestimated this year was how important robots with a ground intake would be, as in how well they compete in a regional and how helpful they are as partners. (Or how scary they can be as opponents)

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

Not necessarily! Many teams, including teams like 118 and 1114, mainly scored using the feeder station. It's a huge bonus in autonomous, but ground pickups can definitely be matched by robots that get frisbees from the pyramid.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I think Ri3D changed game from the start, with hundreds of teams copying their linear shooter. This lead to a higher scoring success than I would have predicted, leading to the decrement of the top-rung pyramid climb (versus hang). The attachment depicts a render of what my team had originally designed as a do-it-all strategy, climber and all- after our first regional we niched that strategy.
We ditched the 2-CIM corner climber for a buzzer-beater 10pt hanger.
This season taught me that I should design a robot around autonomous. Two frisbees at once, please!
I am surprised how optional the ground pickup was... I thought there would be more, just slow and inefficient, ground pickup robots.
If the ground pickup or climb ain't fast, then lose it. Also, human intakes still require a good design, even if the concept looks simple.
...hopefully that was mostly on topic, as all of the above were mostly unexpected. :yikes:

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I learned that everyone's hindsight is always exactly 20-20.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I was surprised (and tremendously pleased) that the GDC hit a grand slam two years in a row!

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I was honestly surprised how little the smaller robot footprint seemed to affect us. Granted, we had to get a little creative with our electrical engineering, that said, it didn't really do much other than make us rethink a couple minor "standard" things.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

After seeing what I would consider to be a decline in quality after Rack n Roll up until Logomotion, seeing the GDC top their best game a year after it ended was quite an enjoyable surprise. Easy to explain, fun to watch at all levels, and manages to be strategically complex while stunningly simple and beautiful. Shrinking the load safe zone and making the scoring zone a 3 dimensional object really opened up ways you play both offense and defense and optional design constraints in ways you did not see in Foul-party 2011 or Rumble.

Come on guys, let's go for 3!

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

Ether posted a chart of all the match scores for 7 weeks. What surprised me was the sheer number of low scores. I believe this shows that there is a widening divide between the average First team and the elite.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

Going under the pyramid proved to be far more useful than expected.

Full-court shooters actually dialing it in surprised me as well.

Probably the biggest surprise for me: autonomous was actually a highlight of our robot. Never happened in five years. Who knew?

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I'm not so sure about this one. Last year had lower scores across the board I believe, and the EWCP blog says that last year's scores median score was dismally low. This year, with allt he resources out there, it seems like every team is able to score points, and as a result, we see less zero point scores and higher scores in general.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I think this years game piece is awesome; I loved the ease with which it can be scored accurately, but the difficulty in manipulating it consistently. I think this led to a lot stronger average robots, and helped to subdue 'everything-bots' (along with the difficulty of climbing of course).

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

Strategy-wise I think I nailed it on Day 1.

• For an alliance, there are 180 (almost) guaranteed points, yet the difficulty required for designs to get all 180 is well beyond 99.9% of teams
• A solid dead-reckoned autonomous with 4 cycles and a 10-pt hang puts many teams in the upper echelon this year
• Doing a 5 or 7-disc autonomous is HUGE, but requires ground pickup and under-pyramid heights
• Going under the pyramid opens up 2 entire zones of play, regardless of alliance

My only real surprise was that we couldn't get a good disc delivery mechanism from the floor to the hopper, given the talent on my team. Meh.

One thing that surprised me was how much more advantageous mid-field autonomous routines are for Quals, since I didn't realize that leftover discs were on the center line ::rtm::

Was surprised about being allowed > 60" for the start of the match ::rtm::

Nothing major though. We scrapped floor pickup last night since it was causing an over-complexity in our hopper. Now the discs don't jam one bit. Was a bit surprised that we could shove 7 discs through in under 7 seconds with no jams, for once :ahh:.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

Being an alumni of and former 9-year mentor for team 33, I'm disappointed that I completely missed how important autonomous mode was (i.e. picking up frisbees from the ground.) Those 15 seconds are basically an extra bonus time, and I feel like it's important to use it resourcefully. Luckily, when paired with another team with floor intake, this becomes mostly a moot point.

Not game specific:
it caught me off-guard how difficult it is to switch teams. There are so many tiny adjustments, based on small nuances that each team has, and habits that formed from the previous team, that it is actually pretty stressful. It was an amazing experience though, and one I recommend to other mentors. It's made me a better mentor. I love my team and everything they've taught me!

That we under-estimated the 95th percentile winning score in our early strategy sessions.

Usually we overestimate how high scores will be.

Also, I was floored by the number of teams that successfully 30pt climbed at a week 1 regional at BAE...

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I was astonished that some of the 3 and 4 thousands were showing up some of the traditional powerhouses. With a game as unusual as this one, their unique, simple, and not as experienced perspective gave them a real edge in competition.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I expected far more teams to "overreach" - to try the hardest game tasks and fail to do so adequately. I think a game that was "obviously hard" (as opposed to subtly difficult like 2012) led teams to decide early to specialize, leading to a more balanced and competitive field than I have seen in years.

Specifically, I expected most teams to try and ground load like they did in 2011, as well as hang for extra points, rather than purely cycle and 10 hang.

I guess our commitment to simplicity isn't an advantage anymore, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

Smaller footprint? Ours wont even fit through a door without turning it sideways. This year we have had more surface area to mount and build on than ever before. Just got to thing outside the box (pun intended).

Attachment 14636

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

The shear strength of the middle tier, everywhere.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I thought ground pickups would be dime-a-dozen. Turns out there were many regionals with only one or two floor-loading machines. (Also HOT arms! They're super useful, minus the lack of continuity.)

I over-estimated the value of a climber. I never thought an alliance could win anything without a 50 point climb/dump. Many of the three blue banner teams didn't have a climber on their any of their alliances (in eliminations.)

Ultimate ascent has certainly been an interesting experience, can't wait to see how it plays out at CMP!

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I was surprised at how "easy" (:rolleyes:) it was to build a consistent scoring mechanism. I expected far less precision in shooting, and a lot more missed shots. This also led me to believe the mid-level teams would not be able to build a useful full court shooter.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I was in the same boat. I was talking to a few team members today about this exactly. When I first heard that we were shooting frisbees I was sure that they would be nerf-foam type stuff. I could not even begin to imagine a shooter that had any accuracy. The whole wheel idea was not obvious to me at first. Somehow wheels actually work really well, which amazes me. It's one of the only FIRST games where the way to achieve any points wasn't completely obvious. But somehow it's actually relatively easy. Even some lower-tier teams can shoot pretty accurately (>75%), which is pretty new. Last year that was definitely not the case.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I missed how open the field actually was. I originally thought that there would be a lot more traffic jams around the sides and in front of the pyramid than there were, making cycling less effective. I thought that just sitting in the feeder station and getting discs down field would be huge for an alliance because of this.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I think I noticed how much the "everything bots" weren't that decent. I mean, take the Fighting Pi (1718) for example. They couldn't hang, but they had an amazing shooter and autonomous. Their pairing with The Killer Bees (33) at all of their competitions allowed for a fantastic game (and fun to watch as well.)

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I'm most surprised that I'm not surprised by how the game works in competition. I guess I'm getting old.

We made a simple robot this year, and it was enough to win a relatively easy regional. Fortunately we picked the right things to do, and we made the robot do them well enough. Some teams that made more elaborate robots did better, but it looks like they had to really work for it. And quite a few teams with more elaborate robots didn't do as well, perhaps they took on a bit too much.

Good job, GDC

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

One thing that surprised us this year was our performance at the one regional we went to xD jumping from 43rd to 10th wasn't what we had planned c: but now it gives us so much more confidence for next season nwn

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

Heh, I remember the announcer saying that when you got an award at Seattle.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

What really surprised me was the *relatively* low number of disc-related injuries and "Ultimate Descents".

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I was surprised that full-court shooters were not blocked most of the time. Our very first match in Hub City we helped one of our alliance partners put on a structure to block the only FCS there (glad to see you made it, Appreciate; good luck in Archimedes). I thought that'd be happening all the time, both in qualification and in elimination matches.

In our design sessions we dropped trying for a FCS pretty early, because we thought they'd be easy to block. Obviously, some teams built some really, really, nice bots using this strategy, and it worked out well for quite a few of them.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

This is the first year in 10 years of FRC that my internal estimate of robot scoring ability was less than than what we actually saw on the field. I think there are a couple of reasons for this.

Frisbees are the most consistent flying gamepiece we've ever had. The foam basketballs of 2006 and 2012 were just not very uniform, and even with an extremely rigid structure, close shots, squish-o-meters, and closed loop controls you would still miss. They were also less dense, meaning aerodynamic forces were a less negligible part of the force balance. Drag is not a fun thing to deal with for small squishy objects with varying surface characteristics at low speed. On the otherhand, it is dang near impossible to miss a frisbee shot! Even going for the comparatively small 3 point goal, teams didn't miss much. Frisbees are dense and consistent.

Frisbees also behave alarmingly well when left to their own devices (unless you are 67 at the MSC). It has long been a personal rule that you always keep power on the gamepiece, because it will break your heart if left to its own devices. Frisbees in a bucket "just worked", and this saved many teams from developing their own hopper.

I would love to know the number of Ri3D "clones" (understanding this definition can vary). I bet there are probably 100 robots that are pretty close, and several hundred more that used something from that video in developing their own solution.

There was also a significant amount of information sharing on CD, with people talking about their experiences with the Banebot wheels vs. pneumatic wheels, among other things. I don't remember as much manipulator specific information being shared in previous years.

I was surprised at the number of working 30 point climbers. They were relatively rare, but I had figured they would be closer to the rarity of suspensions in 2010.

I didn't anticipate the FCS actually working, but clearly the GDC did. (Or they got lucky with the 84" rule)

I think for once we thought frisbee pickup would be harder than it actually was. In ball games, it can be really hard to collect because you knock the balls away with your frame. Frisbees don't do this, they just stay put on the ground.

All in all, I was surprised that robots were better than I thought they would be. That is a very pleasant surprise. :)

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

Us, too.

I guess one of these years I'll stop being surprised when robots that can't do anything but drive around don't play defense until (maybe) elims, but every year it surprises me.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

We have always had a 10 point hanger

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I was at two regionals this year where no team "Graciously Accepted."

Wetzel

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

At one of the competitions I attended, the FTA asked all the representatives to rephrase their responses. Quite the good natured prank, it really annoyed the 'traditionalists' in the stands. :D

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I talked to all the team representatives before selection at all 6 events I went to this year, two I attended with teams and 4 as FTA. It wasn't until Baltimore in week 7 that I realized I could use the drivers meeting as a bully pulpit. :D

I am hoping that all the teams selected on Galileo will have interesting acceptances! :yikes:


Wetzel

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I was pretty sure scoring would be high based on the ratio of the scoring objects' size to the area of the goal mouths. I was somewhat amazed that the team did not decide to attempt more than we could reasonably expect to do. At less than a third the meeting hours of other teams, we just do not have the manpower to "do everything." The team showed considerable maturity by not insisting on doing too much.

Re: What has surprised you this year?
 

I was suprised how hard it was to build a 30 points climber (we did it all the season) and how easy it is to build a shooter (we did it in this week before championship). We will be able to do everything in tha championship but it is a bit ridicules how the scoring is not equal to how much the task is hard.