Just got done with the Centurion-Krawler Event. Nothing but praise for the host teams. It was incredibly well run, one of the best non-competition event I've been to, and I haven't been to a bad one.
Tons of notes and comments about Stronghold:
- Climbing is so rare! Only 3 teams out of 20 had a climber, and only 2 look like they'll work.
- The event I attended had many of the top robots in MN attending and none of them dissipointed.
- Almost every team I talked to was in a better position than they normally are. I think this is a testament to MNFIRST's growth and all of the off season training events that are being held.
- 4607 broke the field in like 8/12 matches that we were in (Sorry 2052, and 2472!) Better watch out Lake Superior and North Star field reset crews. (Our driver likes to call his driving style DoH - Dukes of Hazard. We caught >1 foot of air on multiple occasions)
- Accurate high goal shooting wasn't terribly rare, but that's probably due to the quality of robots at the event. I'd say there were 4-5 teams out of 20 that could effectively score in the high goal, and things got much better throughout the day.
- Low goal is the way to go for almost every team. 2574 cycled low goal all day and they were very effective.
- Damaging the defenses has been blown way out of proportion. It's really not that difficult. We'll see how that changes under heavy defense, but there is a lot of incentive to focus on offense during quals.
- There were a large number of teams that could probably breach on their own if that's all they focused on. Breaching will be way easier than weakening the tower.
- The hardest non-gated defense for auton is the ramparts. It'll turn your robot sideways in a hurry.
- There wasn't a single team at the event that could pull open the Sally Port or Drawbridge from the neutral zone.
- Driving from the opponent's Courtyard to the neutral zone through the gated defenses is harder than you'd think. Most teams seemed to benefit from going over the rough terrain or Rockwall on the way back.
- The hardest defenses for most teams seemed to be the moat, and the portcullis
- Inspecting bumpers is going to be rough. Really rough... inspecting the software versions will also be rough. The PDP doesn't show up on the driver station so you actually have to connect to the roborio to check it out. That's annoying.
- Connection issues are a real thing. The robots take a serious beating (seemingly more so than 2014) and the electrical system is affected. I think we'll see a ton of robots dead on the field for 30 seconds while their radio resets. I'll bet the biggest offender is the 10 and 20 amp fuses in the PDP. With so many teams using the same PDP as in 2015, it'll be a problem. You shouldn't be able to pull those fuses out by hand, and most robots that I inspected you could. I think the plastic that holds them in has deformed, which leaves many teams in a bad situation.
- Good luck Refs, glad I'm an Inspector
- Karthik was justifiably terrified. There are in fact a disproportionate number of low bar robots. None of which were only low bar robots.
- There seemed to be a ton of design variety even considering the height restriction that most teams gave themselves. If I had to break them down into 2 categories they would be: Articulating arm with wheels to intake and shoot (Similar to our GreenHorns Ri3D Robot), and full side intakes that load catapults (Similar to Snow Problem's Ri3D Robot).
- If you're still reading you deserve a cookie
- Stronghold has taken the best parts of the last 4 games and combined it into 1 super-game. It'll be a blast. I'm pumped.