Well played GDC

[liam.larkin]

Just got back from a team meeting. We had our come to 'Jesus' 'Allah' 'insert your deity here' meeting and have settled on a design. Hopefully drive train is operational by Sat. But I digress is it just me or is this the absolutely positively most difficult challenge ever?. I have been with FRC since 98 (student-volunteer-mentor and now team administrator) and holy crap is this hard. New dimensional constraints, this elusive and complex 30 point climb (potentially), picking and indexing frisbees (really GDC frisbees), and on and on. Hope all of you slept during the offseason because this year is truly a challenge. Well played GDC. Thoughts?

[xSAWxBLADEx]

Yes, this is the the hardest game to design something to play.
But as game play goes,This is just as hard as the overly defensive 2007. *

*SOURCE:Catalyst 2013

[alex334]

It is a rather difficult game in many ways, but everything is definitely doable. This year's game forces teams to perhaps not aim to be all-around all-stars, but to specialize on one or two tasks. We're finding it difficult to fit everything on our robot, so we gave up some capabilities. Frankly, I think this game is a lot more like real life: there are pros and cons to every design and you can't have everything. We're going to see a lot of bots that can only climb. And that's really fine.
It was a challenge at first, but our team got through it and we're rather happy with our progress. Just don't give up!

Good luck!

[MetalJacket]

I definitely agree that this is one of the most challenging games yet. I haven't been in FIRST for that long (only since 2011) but I've looked at past games and this is extremely difficult in comparison. When this game was revealed, I'm sure there were more than a few members of our team (and others), including myself who looked a little like this - . Although, it is nice to have a challenge, it should make it all the more satisfying to come up with an effective solution.

[liam.larkin]

Couldn't agree more we played the what if game and had to really decide on what was important and what we could live with not doing for us it's a man power issue only so many students and engineers for all the issues. But still my god they really threw us a crazy one

[Donut]

The 30 point end game climb is the most difficult single challenge in the alliance era, if not ever. The requirement of only contacting 2 levels at once forces teams to reach for the higher levels while already suspended which is a real step up in challenge from the previous games that involved hanging.

I think the game as a whole is one of the most difficult made, but not the worst. I think 2010 was harder to just score any points period. The bumps were huge, the bar to hang from was high, and the rule against carrying balls made game piece manipulation a significant challenge. A large majority of teams became a box on wheels that season and couldn't manage to ram balls into a goal most matches, which was reflected in the high number of 0-0 scores. At least the season a 10 point hang and human loading frisbees to dump in the low goal are easily attainable scoring methods.

[dtengineering]

Aha... in admiring the complexity, you miss the simplicity.

It is the easiest game to play... build a drivetrain, put a shooter on it, and hand load. Not what your team will do, perhaps... but what many of your alliance partners and opponents will do.

The shooter mechanism is probably the easiest manipulator to build since... ever? Within a day teams had demos on line and were repeatedly nailing the high goal.

As demonstrated, it was possible to build a robot capable of playing a thoroughly enjoyable version of the game and making a helpful contribution to any alliance in just 72 hours. Add a simple lift mechanism and you've got a 10 point bonus, too.

So it is simple to build a good robot, but very, very difficult to build a great one. My admiration for this years' game lies not in the challenge in building a great robot (that is always there) but in the fact that all teams have a good chance of making meaningful offensive contributions to their alliance this year.

This should be a really, really fun game interspersed with moments of 30-point climbing awesomeness. And as glad as I am that the "go for it" teams are more than sufficiently challenged, I'm even more glad that some of the smaller, less well-resourced teams are going to be able to be very competitive if they stick to a simple design and executing it well.

Jason

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

Aha... in admiring the complexity, you miss the simplicity.

It is the easiest game to play... build a drivetrain, put a shooter on it, and hand load. Not what your team will do, perhaps... but what many of your alliance partners and opponents will do.

The shooter mechanism is probably the easiest manipulator to build since... ever? Within a day teams had demos on line and were repeatedly nailing the high goal.

As demonstrated, it was possible to build a robot capable of playing a thoroughly enjoyable version of the game and making a helpful contribution to any alliance in just 72 hours. Add a simple lift mechanism and you've got a 10 point bonus, too.

So it is simple to build a good robot, but very, very difficult to build a great one. My admiration for this years' game lies not in the challenge in building a great robot (that is always there) but in the fact that all teams have a good chance of making meaningful offensive contributions to their alliance this year.

This should be a really, really fun game interspersed with moments of 30-point climbing awesomeness. And as glad as I am that the "go for it" teams are more than sufficiently challenged, I'm even more glad that some of the smaller, less well-resourced teams are going to be able to be very competitive if they stick to a simple design and executing it well.

Jason

Well said Jason.
There will be a lot of great single function teams this year that will experience high success vs. what we've seen in recent years, especially 2010 and 11.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by waialua359

Well said Jason.
There will be a lot of great single function teams this year that will experience high success vs. what we've seen in recent years, especially 2010 and 11.

I also like that even if you attempt something that you can't do, it's much easier to change strategies and still play a good game. If you built a shooter last year and couldn't aim, there wasn't much hope for contributing to your alliance, out side of balancing.

[Chris is me]

The "minimum" robot is reasonably easy to build and the "everything" robot is almost impossible, with a wide spectrum of different options in between that you can choose based on your team's capabilities. In my opinion, this is simultaneously the hardest design challenge in years, and also the one with the most opportunity for teams of all skill levels. An amazing job by the GDC - I think they truly challenged every team an appropriate amount this year.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

I also like that even if you attempt something that you can't do, it's much easier to change strategies and still play a good game. If you built a shooter last year and couldn't aim, there wasn't much hope for contributing to your alliance, out side of balancing.

What do you mean by this? Balancing required "only" a working drive train and yet 60% of alliances did not balance the bridge. And balancing the bridge with two robots won 50%+ matches last year. If you build a shooter that doesn't work this year you can build a last minute dumper, but I don't think you can make the game winning point contributions you could last year with just a working drive train.

I definitely think this is one of the most interesting games in recent years. While I was really disappointed to have finished high school playing Lunacy, I'm psyched to get to come back as a full time mentor in Ultimate Ascent!

Throwing Frisbees is "easy" -- indexing them is hard. A 10 point hang is "easy" -- a 30 point hang is HARD. Loading from the human is "easy" -- loading from the floor is hard.

The only potential issue is that there is a real possibility for blowouts in quals because there is such an emphasis on autonomous and the endgame. and historically the bottom half of the field is not very good at either of those. I don't think it will change the W-L-T that much from previous years, but the margins of victory will probably be even more lopsided. But, that is a price I am willing to pay for what will hopefully be a killer elimination tournament.

I'm also excited that there is a ground swell of support for simple robots, at least on CD. Hopefully the CD group-think is linked up with what the rest of teams are thinking. One can hope!

[dodar]

Originally Posted by xSAWxBLADEx

Yes, this is the the hardest game to design something to play.
But as game play goes,This is just as hard as the overly defensive 2007. *

*SOURCE:Catalyst 2013

Was 2007 hard to design for? 2007 was my freshman year and I still believe that 2007 was the easiest year that we designed a robot because of the pure simplicity of the game. You had to score rings on 3 different heights and had to be able to climb, usually, something close to a 15 degree ramp. The same concept is for this year to with a little twist. You have to score frisbees into 4 different goals and hang on 3 different heights. Pure simplicity and extreme ability can still be acheived this year, just as in 2007.

[Tetraman]

It's pretty safe to say everyone has covered it already, but this might be one of the easiest games to build for - which makes it all the more difficult for teams who want to own the competition. There is no doubt you will have some qualification matches with teams making 30 point climbs in 10 seconds being beaten out by solid alliances that score three sets of 10 point climbs.

If the game goes over well (which I am sure it will) I guarantee that we will see Discs utilized quite often in subsequent years of FIRST games.

[dellagd]

This is one cool game. I love it. It's interesting how they set it up, how its actually quite easy to do one thing (pretty well I might add), but then to be awesome at more than one thing it gets way harder. I cant wait to see the first scrimmages (and maybe attend one! ).

[pfreivald]

I agree with the general sentiments expressed here.

FIRST has, by and large, done a pretty good job throughout the years in designing feats of robotty goodness during teleop that have tiered difficulties, with correspondingly tiered points.

What makes Ultimate Ascent different is the tiered value of what-most-of-us-probably-still-think-of-as-the-"end game"-but-isn't-technically-the-"end game".

A ten-point CLIMB is non-trivial for inexperienced teams, but very doable. A twenty-point CLIMB is going to be a challenge for a lot of experienced teams, and the thirty-point CLIMB is going to be very tough... But it's even better than that, because you now have another trade-off. The pyramid is NOT the end game, it's just another thing you can do during the game instead of playing defense or scoring frisbees.

There's an additional challenge for "elite" teams of designing a robot that not only climbs, but climbs fast enough that it's worth your while to do it instead of something else. (Is a thirty-second thirty point CLIMB "worth more" than a ten-second twenty-point CLIMB or a two-second ten-point CLIMB?)

I think that the GDC did a great job with the technical and strategic challenges of Ultimate Ascent.