[FTC]: Full Field vs Low-cost Field

[NalaTI]

Originally Posted by PhilBot

To clarify Derrick's post (FTC 4240).

Eg: our low goals ended up being about 1/4" higher than the offical goals. Our mechanism worked at home, but not on the real field. Although the rules say to allow 1" error on positioning, it's just not practical in some instances. Having the perfect setup is really needed in some cases. Since the plans show how to make a field element to fit on the official perimeter, it just doesn't fit the same on a wooden or plastic field.

The devil is in the details. Maybe one day we will be able to afforst a real field.

Actually the low goals on the Edison fields at world were (at best) 3/8" lower than shown in the Q&A (The Game - Playing Field #6) -- we got permission and measured during lunch on the first day. Two of them were at 3-1/4, one of them was at 3", and one was 2-7/8". Since the Q&A says they were supposed to be at 3-5/8 we were disappointed and had to scrap one of our coolest autonomous routines as we were not able to get to a dispenser below 3-1/8". Note that all of them were within the 1" tolerance allowed by the rules, it just wasn't any fun for us as we expected the fields to be better than they were!

BTW, the autonomous that we scrapped could do 100 points when it worked perfect (in practice)... dump the initial 5 (30 pts), cross to the other side (10), empty the dispenser next to our low goal (30), while shooting (using a paddle like last year) all of the batons that we dispensed into our own one point goal (30 more). When it worked it was beautiful... At world we were only able to try it one time (on the red high dispenser) and it didn't line up right...