At MAR CMP, according to TBA, the drawbridge went 0/34 in quals and 0/13 in playoffs. We are one of the teams guilty of putting the Drawbridge in 4, since in that spot it is worse for the opponent than for you in many cases.
Looking at NE, they had the drawbridge go 0/9 in quals and 0/17 in playoffs.
Unless you are one of the few with a very good dedicated drawbridge mechanism, at the highest levels, it’s not worth your time versus scoring more boulders and just lowers everybody’s scores.
I did see that too. For category A at DCMPs (which I’m using because IMO they’d be more similar in competitiveness to IRI than a regional), the portcullis and cheval seem to have similar success rates, so it makes sense to choose the one that doesn’t impede vision at all. Looking at some week 6 districts and regionals, if the success rate isn’t the same, the portcullis tends to have a slightly higher success rate.
For category D, I’m guessing that’s because the rough terrain is incredibly easy compared to the rock wall; it gives your opponents a fast way in and out of the courtyard. I’m surprised the rough terrain wasn’t used less. I’d actually like to see the rough terrain modified somehow to increase its difficulty for IRI and put it more on the same level as the rock wall, but that might be changing the game too much.
I totally agree with your assessment. Additionally, Rough Terrain use dropped to only about 24% in both Weeks 6 and 7 (and even lower to 21 and 19% in Playoffs), and I wouldn’t be surprised if it drops even lower at Champs.
The question becomes what could be done to increase the difficulty of the Rough Terrain without changing the game too much?
+1:D
The main breaker shouldn’t be that hard of a target.
Add a spy ball that can be placed in the courtyard in auto mode.
add an additional ranking point in quals matches that exceed 150-175 points. (there needs to be an intensive to keep playing. In the event of a blow out you don’t want to see an alliance all on the tower with 20 seconds left to play.)
Stronghold is a good game so to make it better you just need more stronghold
Increasing match length for eliminations 30 seconds
Breaches need all 5 defenses
Increase tower strength
Interesting idea that would add a fun element to an otherwise uninteresting position. I would allow them to score it, but not peg another robot.
Allow them to only score, but only low goals.
Any ball returned to the field by the human player may only contact robots on that human player’s alliance before making contact with another robot.
Sequence of events for a ball is tough on the refs, tbh. Scoring is automated, so it’s easy.
I’d like to see what happens when all the herding/trapping/driving-on-top-of/shooting-outside-the-opposing-courtyard rules were lifted. It seems like it could make the refs jobs a lot easier, there would be a lot more high-flying game pieces, and teams could get more creative with strategy (both defensively and offensively). This might have to correlate with more tower strength, but that isn’t really a problem.
Defensive robots wouldn’t only be robots that can drive well, but now defensive robots that can remove game pieces from their courtyard would be valued, as would robots that can feed their attacking shooters in the opposing courtyard.
Subsequently, when teams don’t have to cycle every time they needed a gamepiece to score (because they could be fed them by partners shooting them into the courtyard), we would probably see less defense crossings in a match, and maybe force teams to make a strategic decision to either feed boulders and score more, or cycle and get more crossings, ideally making it more work to breach the Outer Works without heavily modifying the breaching rules.
Picking on Billfred here, just because he has some of the best ideas I’ve read so far…
Yes yes yes. Playoff tower reinforcement is not only thematically appropriate, but also makes a lot of sense for adapting to the level of play we expect to see at IRI!
(Follow-up question: does the FMS already allow this, and/or can we trick it somehow?)
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I like the idea of giving teams a bit more fudge room around the central boulders during auton, but the exact wording of the revised G13 determines whether or not this strategy accomplishes that without starting an RC war like last year. Perhaps the positions of some/all of the central boulders might be modified instead, so that a certain number of them are unambiguously allocated to each alliance?
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I would definitely support this if we find a way to give each defense 3 health instead of 2, or if we can limit the awarding of breaches to after all 5 defenses have been damaged, or we find some other way to jack up the difficulty of breaching the defenses. Otherwise, I’m not so sure that we want to make an easy thing even easier.
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Certainly! There are plenty of ways to solve the visibility problem, and teams playing at the level of IRI should already have a good solution for this. It was an intended part of the game challenge, and I’d say it still should be!
Without the springs, the portcullus becomes incredibly hard to lift. Like I can barely lift it hard. I know because we tried going through one on the practice field at NEDCMP and snapped a part.
No surprises there, that steel frame is heavy. You could remove the springs and change the frame to aluminum, but removing the springs would completely change the dynamic of the defense.
I personally think the IRI refs can get away with a “we know when you’re going for a boulder” policy where FIRST can’t necessarily, just because it’s IRI and it’s only one event.
Unless many more restrictions are removed, nobody is getting more than two balls per robot. You could protect the three nearest to each low bar not unlike IRI did with recycling containers last year, but I think that affects strategy too much. (If they can auto something besides low bar, you’d put it in position 4/5 and bet on them not having an autonomous for that.)
I really like this game, and don’t think it needs any real changes.
A couple possible improvements:
Have an extra ref monitoring the back-field and corral to ensure that teams get boulders back in ply in time or are penalized.
Find a better securing clip/method for ensure defenses do not pop out at inopportune times.
Discuss whether or not it makes sense to have “standard defenses” and thus eliminate the swapping of the defenses each match. I am not sure they are really adding much depth to the game at this point. You could do a vote for which ones team want out on the field, and them something else to determine the order/placement, and leave them put. If agreed to, then 2 would be much easier to resolve.
Most of my reasons for removing the defense selection is to increase field reset times which will allow for more matches. At IRI the defenses will be breached over 90% of the time (MSC has a breach of 96%). Also, the strategic advantage of selecting your defenses will be much less.
Stronghold is a very strategic game but most people are delusional when thinking the large portion of the strategy comes from picking the defenses.
-Clinton
I generally like Stronghold the way it is; however –
please put the drawbridge in the parking lot and leave it there. Make Sally’s door transparent.
tower strength should be at least 10. Let’s see how that works out at CMP before raising it further.
second Issac’s call for better attention to G34 by the referees. Ball hoarding has been a thing in some matches,
figure out when to Red Card for tipping, and when clean contact = play on. Put Andy Baker in charge of that.
I disagree with completely taking out category A. Although for IRI it won’t provide much of an additional challenge, making the breach even easier is the wrong direction to go. If we’re going for constant defenses, stick the Cheval in, and be done with it. Don’t completely use the easiest defenses.
+1, especially to the transparent doors. Strip away thematic elements for the sake of improved referee visibility and reduced chance of uncredited crossings.
The referee angle is one I might indulge. Mostly-clear Sallyport, OEM Drawbridge? (If you pick the latter even now, you are very clearly making a statement.)