Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

I warn teams about this every season. People still don't listen from the beginning. :rolleyes:

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

This happens often enough that we signed up for a out-of-district event before any of our in-district events just so we don't get blindsided at a tournament that counts.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

Unfortunately, most teams aren't afforded the luxury :/

This is why teams building the real field features on their own, or teams pooling resources to do so, is so critical.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

We didn't build the real field elements...but we did a little bit of modifying of the team field elements to make them more realistic. Added plastic and metal. It does make a difference!

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

I want to point out something that very few people pay attention to on CD (as far as i've noticed). Drive team skill. The skill of a driver and drive team is a very very crucial factor in the performance of a bot, especially in a complex game such as Stronghold. A team could have a extremely well engineered bot, but with a not so skilled drive team, they might not be able to make it to the "higher levels". And vice versa a team with a not so well engineered bot might be able to make it to the "higher levels" if their drive team is skilled enough.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

Since you guys also built the wooden and "field" defenses, could you elaborate on how they are different from the field defenses (other than material). I imagine rock wall and rough terrain can't be much different. I can see how it will affect the fluidity and motion of the sallyport, drawbridge and teeter totter (can't remember actual name). My biggest concern is, how does it affect the low bar?

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

This way lies madness! No game is ever the easiest, and certainly not this one!

Most of the time that you get to think that you can depend on your alliance partners, but that this specific tactic will be the one least implemented and most needed, you're likely to find out that you are one of the seventeen people who brought potato salad to the picnic, and only four brought meat dishes. While a primary goal is a good thing, having a secondary role or two that you can fill is well worth the investment.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

My gut says it's on the harder end-- somewhere north of Ultimate Ascent in terms of difficulty.

I'll reserve my judgement until I've actually seen some match play, though. Most of the teams I've talked to seem to think they're in a better place than usual compared to most other years, so we'll have to wait for verification on the field to see if this is just the usual delusions or teams are actually performing better than usual (I hope it's the latter).

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

We didn't built a to-spec low bar, drawbridge, or portcullis, but instead built a hybrid monster that can serve as any of the above as needed but isn't a 100% representation of them--it's a matter of space, as all of these things have to be stored in my classroom, and I've got to have room to actually teach, too.

The main difference in the other defenses is traction. Pushing up plywood ramps to climb wooden obstacles is tremendously easier than pushing up polycarbonate ramps to climb steel obstacles. Steel is slippery in all the ways that wood is not.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

I really hope that you are correct in your analysis.

My concern is that scoring is still dependent on getting something done on the competition field. The videos I have seen so far show a lot of robots that get over wooden defenses after some struggling and shooting boulders in the high goal where the shooter has been lined up by hand. I suspect that once robots get onto the real competition fields, many will struggle greatly and the outcome of a particular match will depend a lot on chance. I also understand that the teams posting on CD are only a fraction of the teams that will be competing and we are extrapolating from what we see here to the general population. This feels a bit like a class I took in college where the average scores from the exams was in the 20% range and the professor had to "bell-curve" like crazy so that 95% of the class would not fail.

I am also concerned about the number of questions regarding bumper rules that we are seeing here on CD. I suspect there will be quite a few teams that will have to spend a lot of time re-designing and re-building their robots on the Practice Day. Even then, many of these will end up with robots that don't/can't perform as well as they had expected because the longer bumper pieces get in the way of some mechanism.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

From your experience, which defenses seem to be the most different between "field" and "team" versions?

I would guess it would be the moat, rock wall, ramparts and rough terrain.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

Our main concern with the rough terrain was getting wheels stuck between the blocks--almost impossible on the team versions, but moreso on the real ones. We went with 2" wide wheels so didn't notice a difference either way.

Other than that your guesses are spot on. The ramparts in particular are *much* tougher when steel on a polycarb base rather than plywood.