Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

So now that worlds has ended i was wondering what stuck out to everybody the most about drivers/driving. What were some things that were new this year and things that could be done better next time? What went well?

For me one of the biggest things was that if you plan on doing any amount of driving through a camera you better do everything possible to reduce lag. Also communication was key between drive teams and needs to be more that just yelling to come do this or go do that. Maybe designate one drive coach before the match as the head coordinator or something like that.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

Having a short robot, it was not fun trying to back through the sally port. The most I could do was have the operator flip up the defense manipulator. Other than that, I must have hit one of the sides of the sally port more than I successfully made it through it.
Visibility as a whole wasn't exactly great this year.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

The way we worked was we had our coach giving high-level strategy decisions, and our operator worked with the driver to help with details. What often happened was the operator watched the camera feed and spoke to the driver to adjust, while the driver watched the robot.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

I'm sure it was more fun than driving last year.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

You got that right, whole lot more fun acutely getting to hit other robots!

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

My main takeaways:

Vision was incredibly difficult. Whenever the portcullis or drawbridge were chosen, it was very difficult to see through to the opposing courtyard. Our camera came in handy for not only shooting but also opening the sally port with our little lexan arm.

Defense was very very difficult to deal with for us. In the two matches we played against heavy defense, lining up shots got very hard.

Overall, it was really fun. Crashing over defenses was great and it brought up some really cool moments, most notably pushing a stuck alliance member over the cheval de frise, getting 2 crossings at once.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

This.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

I personally loved it compared to last year, nothing like trying to push a partner under the lowbar and having your 10in tiller tires climb their bumpers and onto the bot only for them to tell you that they'd never done lowbar
-_-.
That said it beats stacking totes and driving over noodles

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

Boulders getting stuck in the low bar was the most annoying thing ever. Whenever we wanted to cycle through the low bar with a boulder and get a low goal we couldn't if we didn't want to get a tech foul. It was very annoying as it could make cycle times twice as long or even worse get a boulder caught in the wheels. The first low bar fabric probably would have never had this problem...

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

I'm on the drive team for my team and it was hard to see over the Sally Port because our robot and team are both short. We did have a camera but sometimes it would not work correctly so we had to stand on the tips of our toes trying to see our robot. This is where our spy came into play, I would look over to her and she would try and help me point the robot in the right direction. This was a better game than last year to drive at even though the boulders were a pain if they got stuck under your robot.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

So much better than wall-e simulator to drive, heartbreaking at times but NEVER a dull moment. Loved it. In the future I would have liked to see defences that were a little harder, so you couldnt buy a set of pneumatic wheels and cross 5 of the 8 defences instantly. So great though8

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

like many others here we had issues with the sally port, but our biggest issue was running over boulders, spotting boulders and communicating positions was a huge part of the effort of our drive team

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

I think the three things that caused the most problems were boulders, communication, and vision. I think the biggest problems with the boulders was them getting stuck in the low bar and getting stuck under the robot. Communication was a issue because there were 2 driver stations on one side of the tower and 1 on the other making it difficult to communicate to both of your alliance partners at once. The last major problem was like many have said vision especially for smaller low bar robots like us where the only thing we could see when behind the Sally port was the tips of our shooter wheels. There was also an instance when we were playing defense from driver station 3 and we went all the way around the tower to play defense and I could not see our robot at all since the tower sticks out past the wall.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

We were having many problems with vision especially when coming through the sally port. However, we were able to borrow flexible landscaping flags from another team and attached them to the back of the robot. This was immensely helpful in seeing our robots position on the other side of the field. I have included a picture below. Thanks again team 4627.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

We had a similar solution to that problem. We went with 1/8" polycarb pieces that we cut long enough to provide visibility while also attaching them in such a way as to not extend beyond 15" while crossing the low bar. We also color coded them with gaff tape, yellow on one and blue on the other, so that our driver could easily see what orientation the robot was in.

As a bonus, it turns out they actually gave a lot of character to our robot and the team loved that unique and simple feature. We were actually able to give out some of our spare Wigglydoodads (as they were later officially christened) to other teams at champs as well.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

I enjoyed driving Stronghold a lot. As my rookie year, Recycle Rush will always hold a special place in my heart, but the lack of an endgame or any robot-to-robot interaction definitely made it less interesting when compared to 2016. Stronghold was a game that kept drive teams on their feet throughout the match; there was a lot to pay attention to and quick decision making was very important.
I will second the comments about visibility and boulders. If you got turned around behind the drawbridge or accidentally bulldozed a boulder you could lose a lot of valuable seconds!

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

This was my first (and unfortunately last) year as a driver. When Stronghold was first revealed, I knew that with a lot of the top tier robots, it would come down to driver skill to determine which was really the best. Even with the pressure to perform well, I had an absolute blast driving this year.

The hardest part of driving in Stronghold was definitely the vision issue. (Defense is a close second. Darn you 4607, your defense in Carver was insane) Personally, I never had a problem with the portcullis, but the drawbridge and sally port were annoying, especially when there was a hidden boulder that you either ended up driving over or weren't aware of to collect.Granted, these problems could have easily been fixed by some smart thinking from the team, either during build or afterwards.

Stronghold was a wonderful game to drive in, and I wouldn't wish for any other.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

This year's driving (other than 2015) really seems like it went back to how it usually is. Outside of 2014 (which I thought was fantastic) there was the standard: obstacles, pushing matches and the ever present need for nimble movement. Other than the visibility issues with the portcullis and sallyport, which were not always present, driving this year should have been relatively simple, assuming you had competent drivers. Interestingly enough, the design problem of creating a robot that could successfully defeat the obstacles was unusually high. Clearly FIRST wants to promote creative thinking however the game usually leaves room for new or underprivileged teams. Compared to other years, this games does not seem to allow a more or less stock AM chassis to compete at a super high level. That being said, this hard fact doesn't seem to have hindered many teams and in fact seems to have pushed many teams to accomplish more than they would have otherwise expected.

TL;DR This year SHOULD have been pretty simple driving.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

Vision flags are the best thing known to driver-kind. That is all.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

Well, it was my second year on the team and my first as a driver.

Vision was not as much of an issue, having an arm that can raise and lower as we need it to.

Things that did cause trouble include:

• Driving over boulders
• Trying to see past our own castle to defend (on the left driver station)
• Actually getting the drawbridge and sally port open (without dislodging our climbing hook)
• Lining up to climb and doing it in time
• Those darn dividers getting in the way.
• The wear and tear of being the designated "defense-runner-overer"

Things that were fun include:

• Running into everyone to keep them from shooting
• Every single time we ran over a defense like it was flat ground (minus the flying part)
• Getting those perfect partners that actually do what they say they will
• The one scale we finally got to work

The negatives list is longer, but I genuinely loved this game.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

We had some trouble with backing over balls and vision from the taller defenses. Other than that it was a lot of fun getting to play aggressive defense ;).

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

Being the driver this year, not having a camera was one of the hardest things, the Plexiglass killed me every flipping time.

Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

Seconded :). As a drive coach, I learned camera poles are great for making strategic decisions.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

Not as bad as I originally thought after watching the game reveal - visibility atleast. I remember one game, we chose a draw bridge as a defense, and I couldn't see a good quarter of the field. The nice thing was, we planned for this, with a really long controller wire, and more often than not I was walking around the full width of our driver station.

We used a camera only for going back through the drawbridge.

My operator would also be watching the robot, and let me know if I don't notice something. Also, our robot, in the configuration it would be in throughout most of the match, can be seen over the sally port, which was actually designed in.

One of the biggest inconveniences were the boulders, driving around them, having them in awkward positions, trying not to incur tech fouls accidentally taking a boulder over during a crossing.

Hard to play defense, you don't really know when bumpers are over the vertical projection of the outer works if they are anywhere near it, or in the neutral zone.

The one use for a spy I saw personally - not for us, but for say an outerworks shooter, was for the spy to give a signal (simple as a thumbs up) when the bumpers are in the outerworks - hence the robot is protected by defense. This did not apply to our strategy.

Edit: Oh, and the batter dividers were always fun ;)

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

I'd be careful of long controller wires. T11 of the manual states that if you are more than 1/2 a player station away from your own player station as an operator it's a yellow card.

Re: Thoughts on driving in FIRST Stronghold
 

The first thing that I felt driving in Week 1, was that vision was not as much of a problem as we all thought it would be. Having built a low bar robot, we expected to never be able to see the robot once it's in the opponent's courtyard but in fact, the only time that we couldn't see the bot was when it was directly behind the drawbridge or sallyport. In case that happened, we just lifted our manipulator arm and re-orientated ourselves based on that. When we got back home after our first event, we saw camera poles all over the internet. We immediately thought that was a great idea, but overall useless, because of the lack of limited vision people expected.