How Hard is FIRST Stronghold?

[philso]

A large percentage of the teams are aiming to be low bar capable robots. There is little doubt that being low bar-capable places severe restrictions on the design of the robot and how effective it will be on the competition field. There is always a group of highly effective robots, a group of moderately effective robots and a group of robots with low effectiveness. I suspect that the design limitations of being low bar-capable will make the majority of the middle group much less effective than they have been in past years. In other words, there is likely to be a greater gap between the top group and the other groups and the differences between robots in the two less effective groups will be smaller. This will make alliance selection more difficult than in other years since it is likely that a very high percentage of the pool of robots that can be selected will "suck" (as Andrew suggested in Joe Johnson's thread about what scares Karthik) with few positive attributes to differentiate them. In essence, it may turn alliance selection into a roll of the dice. I am hoping that ours will not be one of the ones that proves Andrew right.

[Kevin Ray]

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

This game is basically 2010+2012.


I predict that, in 2016:
Not many robots will scale consistently. Agree
Not many robots will cross defenses quickly. Disagree
Not many robots will quickly intake boulders. Strongly Disagree
Not many robots will have a shooting accuracy of greater than 50%. Conditionally agree

Doing everything at the highest level will be extremely difficult this year, probably not as difficult as 2013 (where no team did everything effectively), but certainly more difficult than 2014 or 2015.

IMO I feel that as years go by, the learning curve for rookies is greatly skewed toward becoming shorter. This is a result of several factors, primarily the plethora of HOW-TO videos and the wonderful concept of gracious professionalism. Back when I started we were lucky to see half of the teams just fielding a robot that could traverse a flat field on the first day of competition. Everyone crossed their fingers hoping that all robots on the field moved at the start of the match. We would spend weeks determining the best method to encapsulate drill motors to make a drive train two speed. Kit bots and CD have made that mostly a thing of the past. Applying that rate of growth to super structure development and we can see that there is a noticeable difference there too. The mere fact that teams are now shown a video (Ri3d) which provides them with at least a model to emulate or follow increases the number of rookie teams with high caliber robots . Yes, not most, but at least many robots should easily be able to intake a boulder (and, subsequently low goal shoot with high frequency)
I agree with Gus' and Richard's assessments ^, especially about the difficulty with scouting this year. I feel that teams can now be very good at something, many things, or all things in this game --depending on their focus during robot design (and of course, their ability to carry out that design)
Caleb, I only conditionally agree with your 50% shooting if active defensive is employed (or too much time is taken for the shot).

[mjc49]

One area I'm expecting this to be a hard game is the physical toll on the robots. Traversing the B & D defenses are tough on the bots. Add in the normal defensive contact and I expect the mechanics will be kept busy.

Another hard aspect to this game is the variability. That adds so many challenges to the autonomous mode.

There seems to be a number of individual areas a team can master. Doing them all well is really tough IMO.

[Peyton Yeung]

I'm interested to see how robots from teams that go to 4-5 events hold up. I believe 469 has had seasons with over 100 matches the past few years. That's quite a bit of matches and with the stresses put on robots via the defenses I'm interested in how well robots stay together.

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Peyton Yeung

I'm interested to see how robots from teams that go to 4-5 events hold up. I believe 469 has had seasons with over 100 matches the past few years. That's quite a bit of matches and with the stresses put on robots via the defenses I'm interested in how well robots stay together.

Drive teams will have more to do in queue this season compared to earlier ones. Time to make repairs between matches will be very limited, especially for district teams.

[RoboAlum]

I honestly think this is relatively one of the most easy games the GDC has put out cause not every robot has to do everything. An optimal alliance will be an amazing shooter, a bot who can cycle balls to the courtyard and a defense crossing bot. Now can all those qualities be in one bot yes very easily but it requires your kids to think outside the box. I know our robot is around 3ft tall at its highest point but we can also go under the low bar, shoot high and low, collect balls, cross B&D and a few of the others, and climb, and block shots. But its only cause from the beginning we had the image of our robot to be a KISS robot and we are.

Its all about using the greatest resource all teams have our minds.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Hardest. Fun. Ever.

By design.

How's it compare to other games? Idk, I've had a lot more fun building for this challenge than the last couple years. And my students seem more interested in doing cool things. So, how hard is it? Hard enough.

I think the challenges appear harder at first glance, at second glance they seem to relax a bit. Then the devil is all in the details on solving them. I firmly believe the majority of teams defeated themselves before they started cutting metal [1] by underestimating the difficulty and overestimating their skill. So, it'll probably be too hard for most teams.

So, TL;DR - no harder than usual, just different. More nuanced.


[1] Plastic, fiberglass, 3d printing, whatevs

[MrJohnston]

"How hard is FIRST Stronghold?"

In terms of building a robot that can successfully do *something* to score points, it's the easiest game since I've been around.... There will be very few robots at district events that don't put up at least five points for their alliance, whereas, last year, there were many that struggled to get a single tote onto a scoring platform - and a handful that tended to knock more stacks down than they could create.

In terms of really taking over a match, it's harder. In order to really take over matches consistently, a robot cannot do just one thing (think 2013's FCS, last year's feeder station bots, etc.). To truly take over a match, a robot will have to cross 3-4 defenses consistently and score a few goals - or successfully run 7-8 cycles, scoring into the high goal. These are tall orders...

I really think the GDC hit the nail on the head with this one: Every team should be able to design a robot that can contribute every match. However, there is enough variation and difficulty that teams that always like to push the limits of their abilities, have room within the game to do so.

Autonomous possibilities alone are fascinating. On the "easy" side, a robot could start in the spy box and score in either goal or roll forward through a single defense. Adding an additional action greatly complicates the routine as attempting to score after rolling over the defense will require the robot to have the correct electronics to locate itself on the field and find a the target.... Adding a second shot increases the difficulty exponentially.

The climbing is a nice touch, but not so many points that the points available in the endgame overwhelm those scored throughout a match... Frankly, I could have seen more of a scoring emphasis here: Bonus points for alliances that have all three robots scale would have been been interesting.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

I don't know about what the teams that are attempting to "do it all" are up to....we are attempting to do what we think are the most important things:
edit 2: we are going under the low bar

Karthik is terrified of your team.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by philso

A large percentage of the teams are aiming to be low bar capable robots. There is little doubt that being low bar-capable places severe restrictions on the design of the robot and how effective it will be on the competition field. There is always a group of highly effective robots, a group of moderately effective robots and a group of robots with low effectiveness. I suspect that the design limitations of being low bar-capable will make the majority of the middle group much less effective than they have been in past years. In other words, there is likely to be a greater gap between the top group and the other groups and the differences between robots in the two less effective groups will be smaller. This will make alliance selection more difficult than in other years since it is likely that a very high percentage of the pool of robots that can be selected will "suck" (as Andrew suggested in Joe Johnson's thread about what scares Karthik) with few positive attributes to differentiate them. In essence, it may turn alliance selection into a roll of the dice. I am hoping that ours will not be one of the ones that proves Andrew right.

I tend to disagree. Last year had the biggest gap between the top bots and the next level because of the multiplier effect of the cans. (A problem that could have been fixed easily by the GDC by scoring the tote stacks to actually reward stacking vs moving totes.) I've posted a comparison of OPR distributions in the white papers.

This year is more like the 2012/13 games in terms of the distribution of teams' performances. The difference between the low and high goal scores are small and the final reward is equal. I think most teams will be able to surmount more than half of the defenses so they can contribute to the breach. And defense again is playing a role. The teams playing defense will have a visual advantage over offensive bots with the large number of obstacles.

[anishde]

It's pretty much guaranteed that STRONGHOLD will be a mess at the first few tournaments, with robot "spills", tortugas galore, and scoring will be low. The main thing to understand about this year's game is how reliant some teams will be on adapting previous years' mechanisms and designs rather than starting fresh, an area where older teams clearly have the upper hand.

[mrnoble]

The defenses in the Outer Works will destroy about 1/3 of all robots trying to cross them. This is one of the most difficult games I've been a part of. I'm thrilled! It is a great, great challenge this year.

[The other Gabe]

Since it's pre-competition, we can't tell for sure yet on any of this really, but it feels deceptively simple to me. at low levels (early districts), a good drivetrain with an arm to manipulate some of the outer works could easily get you ranked, due to Rank points earned when breaching, and the likelihood of other teams not playing at high level (due to unnoticed design flaws, not quite finishing their robots, lack of practice, undeveloped metagame, etc.). as the competition evolves, the game is going to get harder. teams will figure out blocking, shooting and climbing will become more important, and you'll have to rely on your allies, and your strategy to ensure that your opponents have as much difficulty as possible with the defenses you've chosen for them. relative to other games, I see this as quite a challenge - most years, the game is either mainly a strategic challenge (2014), or an engineering challenge (2015, 2012). this is equal parts both, which is quite cool. I would put it on par with 2013 (which I consider to be the best FRC game yet - and our robot wasnt even good that year )

[boschwah]

Originally Posted by MrJohnston

"How hard is FIRST Stronghold?"

I really think the GDC hit the nail on the head with this one: Every team should be able to design a robot that can contribute every match. However, there is enough variation and difficulty that teams that always like to push the limits of their abilities, have room within the game to do so.

Agreed. The game design this year, to us, doubles down on collaboration. Sure, there will a handful of top teams that can "do it all." At the end of most saturdays, I think three teams that do it all lose to three teams whose specialized mechs and strategies compliment each other.

[pfreivald]

The outer works are hard--really hard.

After demolishing the plywood "team" defenses, we welded up steel ones with polycarbonate ramps...and are now adding helpers to our drivetrain to accommodate what we initially had thought was a done deal.

The "team" defenses are not adequate representations of the "field" defenses, and I'm afraid that's going to bite a whole lot of teams this year.