How did you feel about Stronghold?

[nuclearnerd]

Good:

• The GDC obviously spent a lot of time working on the difficulty curve of Stronghold. The capped-bonus challenges of breaching and capturing meant that lower-tier robots could contribute meaningfully, but higher tier robots couldn't run away with the points. Matches were often won by just a few points, even when the "strength" was lopsided.
• The field looked really impressive from the stands
• The defenses added a really tough, new engineering challenge after a few years of drive train stagnation
• The secret passage "tagging" rules were pretty cool. Sadly most teams didn't go into the secret passage much, but I feel like a slight rule change could have made it interesting (not sure how right now)

Bad:

• Little meaningful interaction between teams. Except for robots who held doors for eachother (rarely), and the race to the batter, the matches were almost always "6 robots do 6 things". That gets really boring from a strategic (and spectator) point of view. Instead of looking for interesting new gameplay, you're watching to see who screws up their part. Contrast that with 2014, where new strategies were still being innovated on Einstein. I fear that this will always be the case as teams pressure the GDC to choose games with lots of game pieces so their performance doesn't depend on others.
• The rules on defense were too onerous. I understand their reasoning, but the result was basically to kill any meaningful defense, and all of the associated game dynamics. When defense was attempted, it usually led to fouls (interfering with a crossing, or not clearing the courtyard in time).
• The field was *really* expensive to build. Take it from a team that built a community practice field.
• I would argue there were *too many* engineering challenges. I personally prefer games with fewer required mechanisms so that we can focus on getting those few working really well, without sacrificing capability. Others will disagree with me though.

[Hjelstrom]

Stronghold was an awesome game and engineering challenge! It was easy to show to relatives and friends and was a big hit with them. I think it struck just the right balance of defense to offense. At the end of the day I want to see robots do their thing not be shut down by overwhelming defense but defense could definitely impact a match.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

I would argue there were *too many* engineering challenges. I personally prefer games with fewer required mechanisms so that we can focus on getting those few working really well, without sacrificing capability. Others will disagree with me though.

I felt it was a good balance. A basic KOP bot would have been capable of contributing to breaches and captures. Low resource teams could build a KOP bot and make minor variations like swapping out the wheels, beefing up the frame, and adding a single manipulator to handle balls and defenses. The MCC was very attainable.

Meanwhile, teams that wanted to custom make a full drive train, multiple mechanisms, turrets, vision assist, tank treads, etc. could do so. But it wasn't a given that a custom engineered robot with many mechanisms was going to beat the pants off something simpler.