How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

Are we overestimating the difficulty of this game? I refuse to include a poll because it seems like every thread has a poll these days.

There has been much discussion about the low bar and how it will affect the way Stronghold will be played. This discussion led to many polls which yield interesting results. Some of these results indicate that about half the teams (on CD) are trying to do it all. Is doing it all really so hard?

First we need to define "doing it all". Here is the criteria as I see it (I'd love to hear some discussion on this as well):

• Shooting High
• Shooting Low
• Traversing all the defenses
• Climbing

The defenses break down into 2 categories, those that can be done with a drivetrain only, and those that require some kind of manipulation. It would be advantageous for every team to build a drivetrain capable of traversing every defense that depends on a drivetrain only. Every team probably came to the conclusion that the more capable their drivetrain is, the better off they will be. There is a COTS solution for these defenses (Rhino tracks) and there are many examples of what works and what doesn't (Ri3D).

Shooting high and low can be accomplished with one or two mechanisms and there are many examples out there for teams to learn from. It isn't a giant leap from building a capable drivetrain, to building a capable drivetrain with a scoring mechanism on it.

Climbing is hard. I'm not going to argue that one bit. Climbing while also doing low bar... that's very hard. So building a do-it-all robot is very hard by extension. However, that wasn't the initial question.

Where does a do-it-all team end up when they fail to climb, or they fail to do low bar, or both? They have a robot that can traverse most defenses and can score high and low. If they do those tasks at a high level, they can go very far. I don't believe it's terribly difficult to do those tasks at a competitive level given the resources that are available.

So how hard is FIRST Stronghold really?

Edit: I should probably clarify that I'm wondering how hard it is relative to previous games. I believe that FIRST in general is "The hardest fun you'll ever have."

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

(nearly) Every team plans and tests in a vacuum. There's no defense, stress of a match schedule, etc etc. Once they arrive to a competition and the matches kick off, the dynamic changes. Week two competitions shift even more, and the game is more refined/more predictable by then.

So week one will be VERY difficult for many teams as alliances work to establish winning strategies inside a VERY complex game.

Week two will be the massive high scoring matches, and the shut-out alliances.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

The issue that many teams (including mine) experience isn't so much attempting to do everything and ending up only doing most of it, but attempting to do everything and spreading resources too thin to do anything effectively or on-schedule.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

The problem isn't so much whether a robot can or can't do a certain objective. It's less black and white, and the real question is "How effective can a robot which does everything be at a single objective?". For example, a robot may be able to go under the low bar and shoot, but the shot may be low-based and easily blocked. Another robot may be able to do everything, but they need to take 20 seconds to climb and have a weak drive train.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

I know exactly where you're coming from. I just think that in FIRST Stronghold by attempting to do everything it leads you down the path to being more competitive than it usually does.

Example: In 2013 if you tried to do everything you probably put a lot of time, effort, resources, etc. into a 30 point climber. I'm sure for most teams that would kill their shooter effectiveness. Or in my team's case, take shooting off the table.

This year, to do it all, the first thing you need is an effective drivetrain, the second thing you need is a way to score high and low. I'd be willing to bet most teams prioritized climbing lower on their lists. So the resources invested in climbing, if they are wasted, are not as significant. You still end up with a robot that can play the game competitively.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

The beauty of this game is not in the difficulty of each individual obstacle. The beauty of this game is the GDC creating a game where each team will needs to make difficult decisions about how they engineer their robot.

By teams accepting the lowbar as the primary defense to attack, they will limit how capable the robot can climb, scoop, and score. It will also limit how the robot can attack the other defenses. Since the lowbar is the low-hanging fruit - most teams will attempt this one first.

This low-hanging fruit of the lowbar means that somewhere between 75-90% of teams have designed a GreenHorns style robot - and thus overlooked essential portions of the game. If 75-90% of the teams at a regional can successfully attack the lowbar (or at least try) - how many of these teams will gum up the lowbar area?

The 10-25% of teams that attacked the rest of the defensive walls disregarding the lowbar altogether - they will be much more capable to create a robot that can traverse the Sally Port, CdF, Portcullis, etc. It also sets up their team to create a shooter that is more difficult to defend. These are the robots that will be the most attractive come alliance selection. Does your team choose from a wide variety of GreenHorns, or does your team take a highly-effective breacher that can scoop and score? Or maybe there are enough GreenHorns style robots that can truly do both...

Then you are left choosing from robots that are best adapted for the end game.

I also think with the RoboRio's tendencies towards brownouts, teams with 2-3 CIM motor boxes will have to limit their other capabilities. Tank drives, tread drives, etc that wish to push and bully for defense will find that they have difficulties. Last season, most teams could run around with light drive trains and not worry about a defender. So this may place in the minds of some of the younger teams that you can build a stalwart drive train and at the same time operate a high-functioning manipulator.

My goodness, the GDC did a great job. But back to GingerPower's op:

It is a simple game with difficult decisions.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

This is the importance of a highly active HUB. If you have a handful of teams in your HUB willing to truly cooperate, then you can have a distinct advantage.

If you do not realize the advantage of a highly organized and dedicated HUB, you should watch FUN session with WFFA Mark Lawrence from 1816.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

I don't know about what the teams that are attempting to "do it all" are up to....we are attempting to do what we think are the most important things:

Cross enough defenses to be able to breach, as an alliance
Pick up boulders relatively quickly
Shoot high.
Or shoot low, if high isn't working so hot (defense, lousy aiming, inconsistent shooter)

We are looking at those magic ranking points. I think we should be able to get the breaching one pretty often. The capture one will be relatively rare (at the lower-mid level regionals we play), but we intend to do our best to attempt it.

As far as defenses, I keep coming back to the fact that there are 3 robots on an alliance, and it just looks like the defenses are designed to be a cooperative thing among an alliance. Stronger robot pushing weaker robot across harder defenses, one robot opening door/bridge for the other two to cross, etc. I'm not too concerned about the defenses thing. But maybe that's because we were able to cross 5 of them today relatively easily in testing, after getting our robot mostly together.

edit: I just noticed that I left climbing out of my post. That's because we left climbing out of our strategy.

edit 2: we are going under the low bar

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

I disagree with the premise that if a team designs for the low bar, they are not also designing for the other defenses. I've worked with or seen 10 different teams' robots this build season and not one has told me "we just designed for low bar". Every team that is designing for low bar is also going to design for other defenses, or they're limiting their effectiveness to an extreme degree.

The overall point that I'm trying to make is that I believe the floor of the competition will be higher this year than it has been in the past. Partly because the game pushes you to make competitive decisions, and partly because there are more resources for teams then ever before.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

I understand what you are trying to convey...

However, if you figure in that there are a very large amount of Rookie Teams trying to get a robot built in 6 weeks - most will go for the lowbar. Then you add in the large number of second year teams that did not have to interact with another alliance last season (that also have to adjust for defensive play as well as building bumpers) and had only 1-2 objectives to deal with in Recycle Rush - I fear there will be an exorbitant amount of teams that are as a default 'rookie teams' when it comes to interactive gameplay as we found in games such as UA, AA, or Rebound Rumble where there is so much going on.

And then you pile on the Rank Points to the scoring - this game is going to come down to specialization and who chose correctly, and then capitalized on that decision.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

The way I see it is Stronghold's main difficulties are in "Timing and Vision". I am fairly confident teams will come up with bots to do some/most/all scoring plays (assuming they have enough vision) the hardest part is doing the what I call 16 scoring plays( goal and/or cross a defense twice) as an alliance in 130 seconds with a 20 second endgame.

Last year timing was an issue too... the best bots efficiently stacked 6 with a can and noodle and had ultra efficient cycle times.

As for vision.... last year was half court this year full court with obstructions.

This year there are no relatively quick "multiple score"cycle possibilities to a close scoring platform, for instance there is no relatively quick 42 point plays to be had in under 30 seconds. This year its individual scoring plays the entire game many "scoring plays" of which take the same about of time as a 42 point play did last year.

That is where the difficulty is IMO this year.

Bottom line in Stronghold there is no one obvious killer strategy like last year due to lack of multiple high-score play actions. Teams will struggle match to mach based on their alliance partners and only the best will be good enough to be effective every match.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

This game is definitely harder than Aerial Assist, because there was a wide open field in AA and every point (except the auto mobility bonus) was from doing something with the ball. The game was about one thing.

It is also harder than Recycle Rush, because you have to worry about defense again.

It is slightly harder than ultimate ascent, because UA had no obstructions on the field apart from the pyramid, and the goals are smaller, though the climb is easier because you can do it in one cycle.

It is about as hard as Rebound Rumble. Obstructions (somewhat more mandatory than RR), small goals (somewhat easier than RR), ball pickup all but mandatory in both, some protection against defense when shooting in both, fairly difficult endgame in both.

That's as far back as I go with first hand experience, so I won't go into further details, but this does seem to be harder than half to three-quarters of the previous FRC games. It seems a bit harder because the previous three appear to have been easier than the median.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

^ +1. What Gus said. :)

My experience goes back a little further. I think Stronghold is the hardest FRC game we've seen since 2004. Its autonomous challenges are significantly harder than any I can recall. As Dr. Joe says, there will be many matches that begin with one or more tortugas -- so teleop will often become an opportunity for drive teams to improvise under pressure. To play the hand they've been dealt, so to speak.

Scouting will be the hardest we've ever seen, because of the factors above and because of the number of possible variations of defenses.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

If I had to rank all the games I've been a part of in terms of difficulty to be a reasonably competitive robot.

1. Recycle Rush
2. Breakaway
3. Stronghold
4. Rebound Rumble
5. Ultimate Ascent
6. Aerial Assault

If i had to rank all the games I've been a part of in terms of a single robot accomplish every game task.

1. Ultimate Ascent
2. Stronghold
3. Recycle Rush
4. Breakaway
5. Rebound Rumble
6. Aerial Assault

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

This game is basically 2010+2012.

In 2010, not many robots climbed consistently.
In 2010, not many robots could move between zones quickly.
In 2012, not many robots could move across center field quickly.
In 2012, not many robots could quickly intake a ball.
In 2012, not many robots had a shooting accuracy of greater than 50%, and that was with the opportunity for improvement on 2nd/3rd shots.

I predict that, in 2016:
Not many robots will scale consistently.
Not many robots will cross defenses quickly.
Not many robots will quickly intake boulders.
Not many robots will have a shooting accuracy of greater than 50%.

Doing everything at the highest level will be extremely difficult this year, probably not as difficult as 2013 (where no team did everything effectively), but certainly more difficult than 2014 or 2015.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

A large percentage of the teams are aiming to be low bar capable robots. There is little doubt that being low bar-capable places severe restrictions on the design of the robot and how effective it will be on the competition field. There is always a group of highly effective robots, a group of moderately effective robots and a group of robots with low effectiveness. I suspect that the design limitations of being low bar-capable will make the majority of the middle group much less effective than they have been in past years. In other words, there is likely to be a greater gap between the top group and the other groups and the differences between robots in the two less effective groups will be smaller. This will make alliance selection more difficult than in other years since it is likely that a very high percentage of the pool of robots that can be selected will "suck" (as Andrew suggested in Joe Johnson's thread about what scares Karthik) with few positive attributes to differentiate them. In essence, it may turn alliance selection into a roll of the dice. I am hoping that ours will not be one of the ones that proves Andrew right.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

IMO I feel that as years go by, the learning curve for rookies is greatly skewed toward becoming shorter. This is a result of several factors, primarily the plethora of HOW-TO videos and the wonderful concept of gracious professionalism. Back when I started we were lucky to see half of the teams just fielding a robot that could traverse a flat field on the first day of competition. Everyone crossed their fingers hoping that all robots on the field moved at the start of the match. We would spend weeks determining the best method to encapsulate drill motors to make a drive train two speed. Kit bots and CD have made that mostly a thing of the past. Applying that rate of growth to super structure development and we can see that there is a noticeable difference there too. The mere fact that teams are now shown a video (Ri3d) which provides them with at least a model to emulate or follow increases the number of rookie teams with high caliber robots . Yes, not most, but at least many robots should easily be able to intake a boulder (and, subsequently low goal shoot with high frequency)
I agree with Gus' and Richard's assessments ^, especially about the difficulty with scouting this year. I feel that teams can now be very good at something, many things, or all things in this game --depending on their focus during robot design (and of course, their ability to carry out that design)
Caleb, I only conditionally agree with your 50% shooting if active defensive is employed (or too much time is taken for the shot).

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

One area I'm expecting this to be a hard game is the physical toll on the robots. Traversing the B & D defenses are tough on the bots. Add in the normal defensive contact and I expect the mechanics will be kept busy.

Another hard aspect to this game is the variability. That adds so many challenges to the autonomous mode.

There seems to be a number of individual areas a team can master. Doing them all well is really tough IMO.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

I'm interested to see how robots from teams that go to 4-5 events hold up. I believe 469 has had seasons with over 100 matches the past few years. That's quite a bit of matches and with the stresses put on robots via the defenses I'm interested in how well robots stay together.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

Drive teams will have more to do in queue this season compared to earlier ones. Time to make repairs between matches will be very limited, especially for district teams.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

I honestly think this is relatively one of the most easy games the GDC has put out cause not every robot has to do everything. An optimal alliance will be an amazing shooter, a bot who can cycle balls to the courtyard and a defense crossing bot. Now can all those qualities be in one bot yes very easily but it requires your kids to think outside the box. I know our robot is around 3ft tall at its highest point but we can also go under the low bar, shoot high and low, collect balls, cross B&D and a few of the others, and climb, and block shots. But its only cause from the beginning we had the image of our robot to be a KISS robot and we are.

Its all about using the greatest resource all teams have our minds.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

Hardest. Fun. Ever.

By design.

How's it compare to other games? Idk, I've had a lot more fun building for this challenge than the last couple years. And my students seem more interested in doing cool things. So, how hard is it? Hard enough.

I think the challenges appear harder at first glance, at second glance they seem to relax a bit. Then the devil is all in the details on solving them. I firmly believe the majority of teams defeated themselves before they started cutting metal [1] by underestimating the difficulty and overestimating their skill. So, it'll probably be too hard for most teams.

So, TL;DR - no harder than usual, just different. More nuanced.


[1] Plastic, fiberglass, 3d printing, whatevs

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

"How hard is FIRST Stronghold?"

In terms of building a robot that can successfully do *something* to score points, it's the easiest game since I've been around.... There will be very few robots at district events that don't put up at least five points for their alliance, whereas, last year, there were many that struggled to get a single tote onto a scoring platform - and a handful that tended to knock more stacks down than they could create.

In terms of really taking over a match, it's harder. In order to really take over matches consistently, a robot cannot do just one thing (think 2013's FCS, last year's feeder station bots, etc.). To truly take over a match, a robot will have to cross 3-4 defenses consistently and score a few goals - or successfully run 7-8 cycles, scoring into the high goal. These are tall orders...

I really think the GDC hit the nail on the head with this one: Every team should be able to design a robot that can contribute every match. However, there is enough variation and difficulty that teams that always like to push the limits of their abilities, have room within the game to do so.

Autonomous possibilities alone are fascinating. On the "easy" side, a robot could start in the spy box and score in either goal or roll forward through a single defense. Adding an additional action greatly complicates the routine as attempting to score after rolling over the defense will require the robot to have the correct electronics to locate itself on the field and find a the target.... Adding a second shot increases the difficulty exponentially.

The climbing is a nice touch, but not so many points that the points available in the endgame overwhelm those scored throughout a match... Frankly, I could have seen more of a scoring emphasis here: Bonus points for alliances that have all three robots scale would have been been interesting.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

Karthik is terrified of your team.:rolleyes:

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

I tend to disagree. Last year had the biggest gap between the top bots and the next level because of the multiplier effect of the cans. (A problem that could have been fixed easily by the GDC by scoring the tote stacks to actually reward stacking vs moving totes.) I've posted a comparison of OPR distributions in the white papers.

This year is more like the 2012/13 games in terms of the distribution of teams' performances. The difference between the low and high goal scores are small and the final reward is equal. I think most teams will be able to surmount more than half of the defenses so they can contribute to the breach. And defense again is playing a role. The teams playing defense will have a visual advantage over offensive bots with the large number of obstacles.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

It's pretty much guaranteed that STRONGHOLD will be a mess at the first few tournaments, with robot "spills", tortugas galore, and scoring will be low. The main thing to understand about this year's game is how reliant some teams will be on adapting previous years' mechanisms and designs rather than starting fresh, an area where older teams clearly have the upper hand.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

The defenses in the Outer Works will destroy about 1/3 of all robots trying to cross them. This is one of the most difficult games I've been a part of. I'm thrilled! It is a great, great challenge this year.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

Since it's pre-competition, we can't tell for sure yet on any of this really, but it feels deceptively simple to me. at low levels (early districts), a good drivetrain with an arm to manipulate some of the outer works could easily get you ranked, due to Rank points earned when breaching, and the likelihood of other teams not playing at high level (due to unnoticed design flaws, not quite finishing their robots, lack of practice, undeveloped metagame, etc.). as the competition evolves, the game is going to get harder. teams will figure out blocking, shooting and climbing will become more important, and you'll have to rely on your allies, and your strategy to ensure that your opponents have as much difficulty as possible with the defenses you've chosen for them. relative to other games, I see this as quite a challenge - most years, the game is either mainly a strategic challenge (2014), or an engineering challenge (2015, 2012). this is equal parts both, which is quite cool. I would put it on par with 2013 (which I consider to be the best FRC game yet - and our robot wasnt even good that year :P )

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

Agreed. The game design this year, to us, doubles down on collaboration. Sure, there will a handful of top teams that can "do it all." At the end of most saturdays, I think three teams that do it all lose to three teams whose specialized mechs and strategies compliment each other.

Re: How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?
 

The outer works are hard--really hard.

After demolishing the plywood "team" defenses, we welded up steel ones with polycarbonate ramps...and are now adding helpers to our drivetrain to accommodate what we initially had thought was a done deal.

The "team" defenses are not adequate representations of the "field" defenses, and I'm afraid that's going to bite a whole lot of teams this year.

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.