Ultimate Ascent - Most Difficult Ever? Too difficult?

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Is this the year one robot/team just can't realistically do it all?
Is combining the challenging game with the reduced size just too much to ask?

I've poured every neuron in my brain and dollar in my wallet into this over the past two weeks, and it doesn't seem any easier yet.

I think a lot of teams will really struggle this year, unless they decide to abandon any plans for hanging beyond 10 pts. The 20 and 30 point hangs will be very rare, especially for a robot that also shoots well.

I'm not saying I want an easier challenge, but if after 12 years and almost all the resources we could need, me finding it difficult makes me think it's terrifying if not impossible for many teams to do well in this year's game.

Anyone agree with any of the above?

I agree with you 100%. Our team has more competent (and even brilliant) designers than it ever has had, and it's taking every ounce of mental effort we have just to design a robot. We were supposed to have a CAD done this weekend. Another deadline blown. A parent asked me today if we were on schedule, and I told her that the game was so hard that it blew our schedule out of the water.

Here's my opinion on making the typical powerhouse "do everything" robot. It can be done. But it won't. Not successfully. By do everything, I mean have a half court shooter and a pickup and a 30pt climber. There simply is not enough room on the robot to fit on all three without heavily compromising multiple aspects of the design. Maybe there's some game breaking design that I just haven't come up with, but I just don't think it's possible. Any team that tries will underdesign their robot to the degree that it will fail in competition.

We're managing to do 2 (or 1 1/2, depending on how you look at it) out of three. If we can pull it off, it will be a beastly robot. But if a mechanism breaks or fails to function as designed or we don't manufacture fast enough or if software doesn't work or if it's too hard to drive or if it breaks in competition it will be a failure. High risk and high reward.

A 30 pt is the hardest thing I have ever designed (and you should have seen our off season project...). We have a huge leg up, a very good prototype climber, but there is still a chance we will fail. Fitting it into that smaller frame size compounds the challenge.

Here's what I can take away: you don't need to do everything. I know a few people on very successful teams, and they won't be trying to do everything. This year will go down in FRC history as the hardest one ever. The robots that rise to the top will not be the ones that do everything poorly, but the ones that are breathtaking at one thing. Be that robot.