Team update 3

[ollien]

Originally Posted by efoote868

Or tying... or braiding... I'm wondering how much brainpower has been wasted on this. And how many better solutions could've been thought up had people not been stuck on velcro.

Hah. Stuck on.

[Cothron Theiss]

Originally Posted by BotDesigner

I think the climb would have been far more interesting of a challenge had we not been able to bring our own rope.

Had the GDC elected to provide a rope with a more reasonable diameter, I would be fine with everyone having to use the Field provided ropes. But as it stands, each of the Field ropes could hold the weight of every robot at the competition at once. I imagine we'll see quite a few bots fail to climb this year cause their winch doesn't have enough torque after their effective spool diameter goes from 1" to 4".

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by BotDesigner

I think the climb would have been far more interesting of a challenge had we not been able to bring our own rope.

Field reset would have also been more of a challenge.

Getting some robots to spit the field rope back out after they've half-choked themselves on it will be interesting, and time consuming.

[Justin Montois]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Not too much here, mostly little changes.



I always preferred when it was a sum and not an average. This makes it much harder to figure out how many ranking points you need to get in a match to jump up to a certain seed, in exchange for making seeding more accurate throughout the competition. Probably for the best, just an observation.

Does that mean the best RS average is 4.0?

[TDav540]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

Does that mean the best RS average is 4.0?

Yep. But it's like a GPA. Just keeps going down

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by Cothron Theiss

I imagine we'll see quite a few bots fail to climb this year cause their winch doesn't have enough torque after their effective spool diameter goes from 1" to 4".

we're planning to start with a 4" effective diameter....and the field rope.

I wonder how it will work? I guess we'll see, when we get our field rope in the mail later this week (hopefully)

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Cothron Theiss

HBut as it stands, each of the Field ropes could hold the weight of every robot at the competition at once.

But, can they do that after 5.75 weeks of competition, when a trip to Champs is on the line? How about 2 weeks later, when it's a trip to Einstein (or New Hampshire) on the line? As it stands, I'd think so. If they were smaller, I'd be wondering.

I suspect they're sized to maintain their strength through the entire season despite wear. The GDC probably figured that teams wouldn't like the field ropes and allowed teams to bring their own--but, if the team's rope fails, it's not a field fault. (If the field rope fails, then that's another story.)

[Cory]

Originally Posted by EricH

I suspect they're sized to maintain their strength through the entire season despite wear. The GDC probably figured that teams wouldn't like the field ropes and allowed teams to bring their own--but, if the team's rope fails, it's not a field fault. (If the field rope fails, then that's another story.)

I'd bet quite a bit that they were picked because they look old timey and fit the steampunk theme, not because of any of their physical attributes.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

Does that mean the best RS average is 4.0?

Originally Posted by TDav540

Yep. But it's like a GPA. Just keeps going down

And I'm expecting several teams to be in the Square Root Club.

[mypie4050]

Originally Posted by TJP123

Biggest update:

It looks like RP will now be avg RP per match, which just makes too much sense.

This wasn't actually a change to the game manual - It already stated that teams would be sorted by avg ranking points this year. The update clarified the non-influence of surrogate matches towards the RP avg.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by TDav540

Yep. But it's like a GPA. Just keeps going down

Unless you're in high school, where the point of AP classes is to pad a GPA with a max of 4.25, or some such nonsense.

[Robomarfa]

Forgive me for not reading between the ropes, how does "sewn" answer the question on velcro?

I think it is a silly discussion, because velcro is obviously not a rope, and I would never let my team take that questionable and easy route. Still, I'd like to know if teams are allowed to use velcro as that puts pure rope teams at a disadvantage.

It is a fun challenge just with a rope. Winch, capstan, grab and pull up, so many good options without velcro. I'd prefer all teams use the field rope, but I'd like more clarity on the use of velcro. We will probably BYOR.

[Bruceb]

Having read all the team updates and answers to question I believe the question about sewing velcro on a rope or strap has been completely answered.
You will see a plethora of teams bringing their own nylon strap "rope" with loop side velcro SEWN to it and they will pass inspection.

If you feel I am wrong please state why you do not believe the above statement to be true.

[qscgy]

If they wanted to settle the Velcro controversy, I would think that they would just say whether it's allowed or not. This just creates more questions, and it does seem like the point of the game is to use a rope, not a rope with Velcro on it.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by qscgy

If they wanted to settle the Velcro controversy, I would think that they would just say whether it's allowed or not. This just creates more questions, and it does seem like the point of the game is to use a rope, not a rope with Velcro on it.

They have said in the Q&A that a rope made of Velcro isn't necessarily illegal. They don't want to say "Velcro is legal" because surely there are things sold as Velcro that don't meet the other rules for a legal rope, but they've specifically refused to say it is outright illegal, and said that there are possible configurations of Velcro ropes that are legal. So they're legal.