Pre-Stop Build Scrimmages - What Have We Learned So Far?

[Mr MOE]

For all of you who participated or spectated (in person or via webcast), what have you learned about ULTIMATE ASCENT and the robots playing it so far?

John

[Garten Haeska]

We learned that our pick up system was very effective and will be very nice in autonomous.

Our shooter works very well shooting into the 3pt goal with chains from the feeder station and from the front and back sides of the pyramid.

Last our 10pt climber worked like a charm and was one of the fastest and easies hanging mechanisms at our event. 3 seconds and only 25psi.

We also learned that if a frisbee is upside down and gets stuck on your wheel,it can really mess with your driving until it gets dislodged.

[Ty Tremblay]

In the last 30 seconds, there will be frisbees flying EVERYWHERE.

[Ian Curtis]

I can see a small subset of human players going over 50% with their Hail Maries.

Reliable full court 3 pt shots are definitely a thing, and it will be fun to watch teams realize this on Thursday/Friday.

Driving in the last 30 seconds with all the frisbees on the field will be entertaining.

Lots of frisbees will be going over the netting.

There are going to be lots of ineffective human loading robots.

Not many robots are picking up from the floor... I wonder if anyone built a pickup robot that can dispense frisbees at the height the loading stations are? That would be pretty neat.

10 pt hangs will be fairly common, 20 and 30 pretty darn rare.

The field will be pretty crowded if you can't drive under the pyramid, and pretty open if you can.

[Moriarty]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

Reliable full court 3 pt shots are definitely a thing, and it will be fun to watch teams realize this on Thursday/Friday.

Are they accurate though? I knew from the beginning that they were possible, but are they a game breaker unless blocked? Are they accurate enough to be superior to a half court shooter with a fast drive train and extremely accurate shooting?

[Justin Montois]

Did anyone see any Issues with bounce out? (Discs bouncing out of the goals)

[Woolly]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

Did anyone see any Issues with bounce out? (Discs bouncing out of the goals)

On the wood-backed goals at the event we went to, it was absolutely an issue. We saw robots that would only make half their shots due to bounce-out.
I have no idea how a lexan goal compares, but my advice would be to shoot softly and have a lot of spin on the Frisbee.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Woolly

On the wood-backed goals at the event we went to, it was absolutely an issue. We saw robots that would only make half their shots due to bounce-out.
I have no idea how a lexan goal compares, but my advice would be to shoot softly and have a lot of spin on the Frisbee.

Lexan usually absorbs force more than wood because of its flexing nature. That could potentially dampen shots that go in. We're planning on heading to the Atlanta Scrimmage which has the official field, so we can go and see if this is an issue.

[Blackphantom91]

The bouncing is 50/50, but it depends on if the chain helps absorb the shot power if going full force. The shots may have to be softer to dampen the chains but we learned today there is a threshold of how you can do it. I really, really want some lexan goals to play with but I don't think it would make much of a difference IMO. Can anyone say any different?

[PayneTrain]

Unfortunately we aren't learning a lot about floor loading, which is the only thing as a strategist I have flipped on multiple times (which is obviously bad for strategy)

I think movement is incredibly easy if:
-your robot is short enough to go under the pyramid
-you have geared your drive to handle the open field environment, or you stacked your drive motors to a 6 or 8 motor drive to make it not matter
-your robot can handle going over frisbees right-side up and work with frisbees upside down
-don't plan on doing a lot of cross-field work after the endgame hailstorm

I think this is a great game for human players, but not Lunacy-tier.

Climbing is still a bit of open book, but the pages are starting to write themselves. A number of teams show the ability to climb. A few teams actually can climb. Fewer teams are big-climb specific bots, and even fewer of those will actually make more than 10 points on climb anyway.

Pyramid shooting, while not impossible, is a lot harder than I anticipated.

Frisbees will fly around in the scoring boxes but never seem to fall out. Regardless, there will be big matches this year where I think a popped-out frisbee or two will decide the outcome.

Bonus observation: if Week 1's arrival date is the steak in this picture, then I am the cat.

[cmrnpizzo14]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

Did anyone see any Issues with bounce out? (Discs bouncing out of the goals)

Today at the Rally I saw X-Cats (191) having a ton of trouble with disks hitting the chains and bouncing out.

[MarcD79]

Were they angle shots?

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by cmrnpizzo14

Today at the Rally I saw X-Cats (191) having a ton of trouble with disks hitting the chains and bouncing out.

The goals were pretty tight so many bounced back all day long. When the shots got through whatever unfortunate team was in the middle got frisbees rained down on them as this video shows.

[BigJ]

I didn't see this earlier in the thread I think. Drive teams are going to have to become desensitized to frisbees slamming into their window a couple feet from their face from human players in the last 30 seconds, at least at events where a majority of the frisbees aren't ending up being used by robots.

[Djur]

Originally Posted by Ty Tremblay

In the last 30 seconds, there will be frisbees flying EVERYWHERE.

EVERYWHERE. It's crazy.