Is Stronghold the roughest game yet?

[AWoL]

Aerial Assist in 2014 was bad because of the crazy defense, but this year it seems like even the game itself is trying to break your robot. And not only do you have to deal with defense and the defenses, everyone's drivetrains are built to climb over things that happen to be roughly the height of most people's bumpers. Add to that all the brawls between robots' intakes in the neutral zone and it starts to make sense why so many robots this year aren't performing at their best come finals. What do you think? Is FIRST Stronghold the roughest FRC game to date?

[Hitchhiker 42]

[sarcasm] Nah, Recycle Rush was rougher. [/sarcasm]

At least you're not fighting as much over the central resources (balls, cans, etc.)

[AWoL]

Originally Posted by Hitchhiker 42

At least you're not fighting as much over the central resources (balls, cans, etc.)

I would tend to disagree; over the past couple days at MAR Champs we got into many tough fights for boulders in the neutral zone, a couple of which severely incapacitated our robot (a particular battle in semifinals broke our 3D printed camera mount and was the reason our shooting was off in the finals).

[Hitchhiker 42]

Originally Posted by AWoL

I would tend to disagree; over the past couple days at MAR Champs we got into many tough fights for boulders in the neutral zone, a couple of which severely incapacitated our robot (a particular battle in semifinals broke our 3D printed camera mount and was the reason our shooting was off in the finals).

I'm not denying there is still a competition for central resources; that will probably always be there. Thing is, there is another source for balls (rolling them into the Secret Passage), so it may lighten up the game a little. Surely, if there were only six balls in the middle, the roughness would be much worse.

[ctt956]

I would say yes. Even the field can't handle it. At every event I've seen this year, there has been at least one robot that left a part on the field. Even some of the robots have decided they don't want to play and this year and made a break for it in autonomous!

[cbale2000]

When it comes to field-to-robot damage, I would agree that this year is probably one of the most rough I've seen. In terms of robot-to-robot damage though, I would actually call this years game pretty tame. With the field as restricted as it was, and the rules on defense what they were, it made it difficult for many situations that would normally result in robot-to-robot damage to occur.

The issue you brought up with bumpers is more about weight distribution and the "bumper zone" being too large. This was also an issue in 2010 when teams had to mount their bumpers high, and would constantly end up driving up over each other, or pushing each other vertically.

As far as manipulators go, basically any time there is a game where you have to extend some part of your robot outside your frame perimeter (ie, most games) you have the risk of damage to it. I for one, think they should bring back the line that used to be in every game animation that was something to the effect of "robots should be built robustly to withstand impacts from other robots and game pieces". If you're worried you might break it, make it stronger or bring a spare.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

I for one, think they should bring back the line that used to be in every game animation that was something to the effect of "robots should be built robustly to withstand impacts from other robots and game pieces". If you're worried you might break it, make it stronger or bring a spare.

Accompanied by a shot of poor Dozer having something fall on him and breaking as a result. I miss Dozer!

[PayneTrain]

It's probably the most brutal in the modern era but the 2v2 era had some doozies. 422 painted their offseason robot red in 2003 primarily to see how much paint they could put on other robots.

[Huskie65]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

It's probably the most brutal in the modern era but the 2v2 era had some doozies. 422 painted their offseason robot red in 2003 primarily to see how much paint they could put on other robots.

I would say 2003 is still the worst but most people weren't around for. First 15 seconds all 4 auto robots run full bore straight up a hill and into each other. End of the match is a straight king of the hill match with tons of high speed ramming... all with no bumpers. Robots were alot more solid back then lol.

[Briansmithtown]

In recent years, games with more defense were more destructive... and fun. This game i honestly didn't see much defense, and got kinda bored. And after championships, ill take about all the negatives in my view of the game. Sure, people would break their robot by dukes of hazarding them over the defenses, but thats where the majority of the damage came from. So no, I do not believe this was the roughest game by any means...(In fact, if you look at 2010 and 2012, the robots easily fell off the mounds and teeter and that didn't end well at all, 2013 robots could fall from the top bar on the pyramid and literally end their season. 2014, again a lot of robot on robot action. 2009, static electricity discharge onto the cRio). Thats my opinion anyway.

[Thayer McCollum]

I agree that this was not the roughest game ever. 159 has caused some serious robot damage in games that allowed for more speed+defense, enough that (although this might not be true) we look at rules sometimes and say "Oh! that rule exists because of what we did to (insert team # here) in (insert year here)."

[Van.Augur]

Not sure if it's been the roughest game on the robots of all time, but, as others have alluded to above, taken into account the damage that has also occurred to field elements (balls, original low bar), I think the total carnage produced by this year's game has to be up towards the top of the list. I think the best example of this was at the Suffield Shakedown. Because the event did not end up getting access to an official FIRST field, we were stuck with using wooden defenses for the event. I'm pretty sure that by the end of the day, there were more defenses in the graveyard than there were on the field...

I'd still say that Aerial Assist was a little more violent on the bots than Stronghold. The rules regarding defenses and the inability to use the full length of the field to rev up to full speed before slamming into another robot appeared to have made the potential for damage smaller. At the very lest, this year, it seems like damage that occurs to the robots can be more often attributed to the driver, not the effects of other drivers (not to say that the latter is never the case though).

[ctt956]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

Accompanied by a shot of poor Dozer having something fall on him and breaking as a result. I miss Dozer!

Dozer was back this year, just in slightly different form.

[dirtbikerxz]

This year is the hardest game on your bot in my opinion. Yes there were some hard hits in aerial assist... but the bots didn't drive over each other. And of course, field to robot damage is definitely the worst this year. The number of bots that broke down 2 or 3 matches into elims (because they had no chance to check the bot between matches) is insane this year.

[BrendanM]

Yes. This year was rough.