Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?

[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.