Field durability
 

Today at Hatboro-Horsham the defenses started to actual get damaged pretty seriously, some even had to be brought to the machine shop for repair. I am wondering if this is happening at other events or not?

Re: Field durability
 

Long answer
yes

Re: Field durability
 

Depends on what defenses you're talking about.

At GTCR this past few days the low bars were abused quite a bit (both the fabric hanging off of it, and the mounting of the bar to the base), and the portcullis was broken once (I believe it was only once).
Other than those two defenses, I don't think anything broken/damaged to the point of being repair.

The defenses, walls, and batters did get marked up quite a bit, though nothing beyond scuffs and scratches (from what I saw).

Re: Field durability
 

At Hatboro I saw a shovel the fries break (saw it being repaired in the machine shop), the rock wall come out of the base and fly into the courtyard, and a portcullis come crashing down as a robot tried to traverse it. And that's just from being there for an hour and seeing Instagram posts so I'm sure there were more problems. At the end of the night the field was behind schedule by almost an hour and a half!

EDIT: Just talked to a friend competing at Hatboro and the field ended 1 hour and 47 minutes behind schedule (10 matches postponed until tomorrow). One of their matches was restarted 5 times! The field was utterly destroyed

Re: Field durability
 

Waterford, many matches played without access to the Fries... started with Match 1... We also finished the weekend with no fabric on the low bars...

Re: Field durability
 

At Hatboro a lot of games were restarted (sometimes multiple times) due to defenses coming loose, such as the rock wall, moat, portcullis. Also, a sally port was almost destroyed (pieces were falling off), but that was mostly because the team was ramming the sides of it (not the actual door).

The defenses coming lose was the main issue though. A lot of teams method of getting over defenses was by running into them hard so it happened a lot.

Re: Field durability
 

at duluth the drawbridge took the beating. we ended up using the ones from the practice fields. one robot went straight through it braking it in half horizontally

Re: Field durability
 

Our robot actually dug six nice holes in the tower's challenge plastic at Waterford! :rolleyes:

Re: Field durability
 

At Waterbury, the rough terrains were getting bent and stuck in their places on the field. It took 20 minutes to get one out. Also, the sally port has taken a beating. Part of the side wall keeps flying off a lot. More than once, we shall say. Otherwise, everything's pretty good.

Re: Field durability
 

I was a ref at Hatboro Horsham and I can confirm that all of our defenses took quite a beating and that we had more than our fair share of field faults due to robots dislodging defenses.

Here are some of my personal favorites. (Note all pictures were taken after the field fault was called):

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/43020?

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/43019?

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/43018?

I guess these defenses just weren't built #MARtough

Re: Field durability
 

At SD there was field fault (comm) issue and replay next day

Also I saw then "taping" the field in eliminations

Re: Field durability
 

Had a field problem in elims, too. Seems somebody took out a side panel when they were coming out of the low bar to the neutral zone. Foghorn, replay...

Re: Field durability
 

This was the case. Team 2486 the coconuts took a 3 foot piece of the wall out.

Re: Field durability
 

Also, we've seen the same problems with the low bar fabric, and there have apparently also been holes getting gouged out on the carpet.

Re: Field durability
 

HH has big problems. Way behind. If this continues could be a real problem for teams and their transportation arrangements. First has to find an alternative for those pins.