Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

The teams who work out of a classroom or meet less than 20 hours per week are really going to struggle.

Is there any wayto be competitive at this without meeting every single day until midnight.

My team does not meet as a class, has never met every day, and only occasionly meets late when needed. I would say we are always competitive. We have no intention of changing our meeting schedule now.*

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Has FIRST ever made a game that was easy to do?

Yes. 2008 and 2011 had extremely simple tasks that were required to score points. 2011 being 4 years after the previous tube game, with a behind the design book being available every team should have been able to score 2-3 tubes a match.

From my point of view 2010 was harder. the three challenges of the bump, possesing the ball and hanging that year were harder as a combined group. The low hanging fruit way to play this year, human loading, dumping then doing a 10 point hang will be viable for most teams and seed at most events.

The robot that does everything may not actually be viable this year due to space connstraints. It also may not be necessary. To me this is like 2004 where it was almost impossible to hang, hold the doubler ball and collect small balls on 1 robot. In the end only the best teams did it all, while other teams figured out one of those tasks was unnecessary if you played the right way.

*Disclaimer: I'm not heavily involved this year, after 11 years I have too much going on this year to spend much time with the team.

[mrnoble]

This is year 9 for me. This is by far the most fun; oddly, the challenge seems much more doable for us this year. Not because the game is easy or because we've found the secret for a do-all bot; rather, because we accepted early on that we could pursue one of several viable scoring/utility options, and that by excelling in that narrow band we might have a chance in our region. I think lower tier teams that think through their options could become valuable and viable players. Not everyone will like that, and I'm sure the powerhouses will still do everything well, but I am excited to see what teams come up with this year.

[Jared Russell]

This game definitely seems to have been designed to force teams to compromise. Want an accurate shooter? Floor pickup? Storage and indexing for 4 discs? 30 point hanger? Pyramid goal scorer? Go under the low rung of the pyramid? Here, have a 112" frame perimeter and a 54" cylinder (oh, and your bumpers count too).

If you refuse to come to any compromises with your Ultimate Ascent robot design, you risk compromising everything (including your sanity).

[NXTGeek]

Originally Posted by Jared341

This game definitely seems to have been designed to force teams to compromise. Want an accurate shooter? Floor pickup? Storage and indexing for 4 discs? 30 point hanger? Pyramid goal scorer? Go under the low rung of the pyramid? Here, have a 112" frame perimeter and a 54" cylinder (oh, and your bumpers count too).

If you refuse to come to any compromises with your Ultimate Ascent robot design, you risk compromising everything (including your sanity).

So far, all my team is compromising is sanity
Every weekday 2-10:30pm and weekends all day, my (small) team has been meeting in a garage and living room. We all hope it works out. Good luck to all you teams out there, may your robot reflect your design choices accurately!

[JCharlton]

You are not alone, this one's tough.

Our initial strategy to climb for 30 and dump four for 20 more points was near unanimous by the team, and it looks like a lot of other on CD had the same idea. We knew we could only focus on one thing, we didn't have the resources to try to do it all, and were blinding by the big score. Two weeks later we realize just how hard, and how big a risk that strategy is, and two weeks have been lost.

Yesterday we scrapped all we had done prototyping and CADding a promising climbing mechanism and will be starting from square one with a shooter and a 10-point climb. The main concern was finishing in time to get some driver practice. The design challenge was considerable, requiring a unique chassis, and we weren't even trying to incorporate a good shooter.

Now we're hopeful to get a working, playing robot done before ship day, instead of machining like madmen trying to finish an unproven climbing mechanism by Tuesday night.

Bite off what you can chew I think is the lesson for this year.

[Chris is me]

do everything well in this game

This is your problem. In my opinion, FIRST has spoiled teams by repeatedly giving us two game tasks that can be combined together somewhat easily by the mid to top tier, so "do everything" has been an okay strategy. I don't think that's the case this year for many teams. Maybe the elite can do everything, but otherwise you've gotta specialize, or you'll just end up wasting time spreading yourself too thin.

How many teams "did everything well" in 2004? Not many. It's a little like that year in my mind. I hoped this game was hard enough that teams would recognize "doing everything" to be a bad idea. Paradoxically, the teams intimidated by the challenge into aiming lower will do *better* this year than they would in an "easier" year where they tried to do more.

If you're a classroom team working a few hours a week, why, why, WHY would you try to do everything!?!? It sounds like teams have bit off more than they can chew. For their benefit, I hope they spit something out sooner rather than later...

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

This is your problem. In my opinion, FIRST has spoiled teams by repeatedly giving us two game tasks that can be combined together somewhat easily by the mid to top tier, so "do everything" has been an okay strategy. I don't think that's the case this year for many teams. Maybe the elite can do everything, but otherwise you've gotta specialize, or you'll just end up wasting time spreading yourself too thin.

How many teams "did everything well" in 2004? Not many. It's a little like that year in my mind. I hoped this game was hard enough that teams would recognize "doing everything" to be a bad idea. Paradoxically, the teams intimidated by the challenge into aiming lower will do *better* this year than they would in an "easier" year where they tried to do more.

If you're a classroom team working a few hours a week, why, why, WHY would you try to do everything!?!? It sounds like teams have bit off more than they can chew. For their benefit, I hope they spit something out sooner rather than later...

Quoted for truth. Look at the robot in 3 days design, and ask yourself if what you're designing is better, then compare the risks you are taking in complexity. We are benchmarking everything we do against that robot, asking 'will we score more than that robot with this feature, and how likely is this feature's complexity to cause problems'. If you can't reliably beat the 3 day robot with a given feature, ask yourself why you're using it.

[rsegrest]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

As a teacher, on top of my full time job, I've put in over 45 hours per week over each of the last two weeks (and so have some students) outside of the school day, and we're still behind. Being a real leader in this sport is a full time job, which is a lot on top of an already full time job.

Anyone agree with any of the above?

I aboslutely understand where you are coming from. I am a 6th year coach (with no engineering background except what I have learned in FIRST). Up until this year I had 1 engineer that worked with us (this year we finally have 5). I am the only coach and because we work out of my classroom I can't leave the kids with the engineer while I go pick up parts/supplies etc. (district rules). I am also a full-time teacher (4 class preps a day as I teach 4 different classes) and I don't know what insanity inspired me to do it but I returned to college this semester so tack on 2 senior level college classes to build/competition season.

We are what you would probably call an 'average' team but this is something we recognize and accept at this point in our development and it is mainly due to limited resources. It was with this in mind that we decided to focus all of our energy and talent on one aspect of the game. We are not financially able to attend more than one regional and know that it is our one shot at making championships but with a powerhouse field (Robonauts, Robowranglers, Cryptonite, Texas Torque, and Kaos just to name a few) making championships is difficult at best for teams like ours.

Is this the year your team focuses one doing one thing really well? Who knows, that's something you guys have to decide together but as far as the killer schedule and money that goes with this I absolutely understand where you are. All you can do is dig deep and know that there are other coaches in the same boat you are and we are all paddling together (or bailing the water out in some cases ). Know that you have our moral support and that at the end of the day, no matter what your team accomlishes, you are doing a great thing for kids and are admired by many.

If you ever just need to vent or bang your head against the wall (while wearing saftey glasses of course ) PM me and I will be happy to listen and/or offer advice.

Keep your chin up, your safety glasses on, and don't let the magic smoke out of the electrical components and you'll do just fine

[coldfusion1279]

Definitely the toughest game in 10 years. The frisbees are easier than expected, but the pyramid is so far beyond a single bar hang.

Not that I have heard anyone complaining, but we should really relish the opportunity to make hard decisions. If a team doesn't want sacrifice 30 points for floor pick-up (for example) then the team has no right to say the game is too hard.

We embrace this game, because success will say a lot about the team.

[Pauline Tasci]

I think this game is just asking a lot.
But I believe they made this game because it's tricky.
In my opinion, the easy parts are whats going to determine the game.
FIRST knows its hard, they know its nearly impossible, and thats why they chose it.

In years past its the end game that makes you win (mini bot, bridge, ect) But I think this time they are trying to trick you.

Since the game is going to have such a low score, a simple dumper robot getting the 1 point goal will be the difference between winning a regional and ranking low.

Just an opinion.

[pfreivald]

This game is absolutely *NOT* too difficult, but many teams will make it too difficult by biting off more than they can chew.

This game has more forced compromises in it than any I've ever been involved with, to be sure... And I'm not entirely convinced that we compromised the right way. Time will tell!

[philso]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

This game is absolutely *NOT* too difficult, but many teams will make it too difficult by biting off more than they can chew.

This game has more forced compromises in it than any I've ever been involved with, to be sure... And I'm not entirely convinced that we compromised the right way. Time will tell!

This seems to be the only year where I have seen a number of teams "putting all their eggs in one basket". I really hope that these teams do succeed since pulling off the 30 point climb since it is so technically challenging and so cool, like 118's bridge balancing mechanism. Our team, being only in it's second year, chose two modest forms of scoring so we would not be left with zero capabilities after a single failure.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

This game is absolutely *NOT* too difficult, but many teams will make it too difficult by biting off more than they can chew.

My favorite thing about this year's game is that it is quite obviously difficult. Just go on youtube and look for videos of dogs trying to pick up frisbees. Shooting frisbees is also non-obvious, and just thinking about climbing the period makes my head hurt. This makes it easier for smart teams to say, "Well, that's probably not worth our time" and build a robot that ignores one portion of a game.

Games that are non-obviously difficult (Breakaway) are less exciting to watch. Teams try and do everything because they think it will be easy, and then the devil is in the details and none of the mechanisms really work.

[Jay O'Donnell]

I agree that this challenge is one of the hardest yet, but isn't that the point of FIRST? If the objective is to train students for a realistic work experience, then this game is perfect. In the real world, problems don't always have easy answers and long deadlines, and you have to work past that.
In short, bravo FIRST, and thank you for a very difficult challenge.

[mikemascot]

my team has been having some trouble with the climbing portions so where it was once a student/mentor project. Now it is a full mentor project that has taken the last week up