Hi Everyone, I’m Will from team 8410, I was wondering what others are doing for field construction for this years’ game. The official first document is 355 pages and shows how to build a lot of the field elements, but I was wondering what you are all doing to prepare for this season. As a newer team, I am wondering if there are any tips and tricks that make this process easier and more time efficient. Hope you all enjoyed kickoff yesterday and happy build season!
There are instructions for constructing game elements from first our team is probably going to build them off of that
Ok, would you recommend building everything 100% from the plans?
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It depends I would have to look more in depth at them first
ok thank you! 
do the absolute minimum this weekend.
PVC sticks and duct tape for scoring, some cardboard boxes. A completely static CHARGE STATION, no hinge. Maybe don’t even build a CHARGE STATION yet.
Wait and watch for the best field build ideas to come from other teams. Then copy them.
By week 3, make sure you have reasonable vision finishes (real reflective tape, plastic where it will reflect your light source, etc)
By week 4, have a plan for practicing on a dynamic balance beam - whether that’s a shared facility with other local teams, or a smaller mockup, or finishing everything early and testing game piece handling at home, so you can spend three Practice Matches just driving up and down the beams at your first competition.
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Ok that’s a great idea. Thanks for the help
I would build 1 substation either single or double(whichever your team wants to use) a grid and a power station
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but defiantly build power station exactly to instructions
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Figure out what you team plans to interact with this year, and also consider how much space you have available for both practice and storage (can you leave things setup all season, or do you need to tear down and setup frequently, storing the field elements elsewhere?).
If your team doesn’t plan to try and engage with the charging station, maybe don’t make a charging station that moves. Don’t plan on even docking with it? Don’t build a charging station at all.
Similar sentiments for the grids. If you’re not planning to score cubes, don’t build the cube shelf. And if you don’t have space for a full grid (all 9 nodes wide), don’t build the whole thing.
Tl;Dr: evaluate your teams resources, and go from there.
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Thank you all for the help!
So far we are planning on building a half charging station and a few nodes, I’m not sure yet about the rest of the field
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alright!
I might suggest building the human player’s stations, might be helpful for your team to have something to line up to as oppose to dropping onto the field
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ditto
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First - even if you never score on it, vision systems targeting the posts for cone scoring will interact with both the cube shelf polycarb and apriltag vision target
Second - its incrementally easy to build. Literally some cardboard boxes with a 1/32" sheet of PC added where vision systems might reflect light is sufficient.
Teams should build scoring areas for both game pieces this year, 80% of Cone-capable designs will handle Cubes great too. It’s not worth completely writing off scoring a game piece to the point of not even building the scoring area. Sure, don’t emphasize cube development, but put the resources in your test area for cheap so that you can stumble across a solution anyway.
The CHARGE STATION balance beam situation is completely different, due to the size/weight of that assembly. That’s the 600lb gorilla I’m trying to plan for today, the cones/cubes scoring is something of an afterthought for my planning process.
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This is a great point and I will factor this into the construction choices for this season, thank you all for some great feedback and advice!
how much at a maximum do you recommend spending?
My post was written from the perspective/assumption* that OP has limited resources (time, space, money, people), and is not a top tier team that can/should be doing everything.
So based on that, I do recommend some teams rule out an entire game piece/field element to ensure they don’t bite off more than they can chew. And if it is so easy for them to build, then should they progress quickly enough during the season to the point they think they need it, build it then.
*This assumption was made because of the fact OP made this thread. In my honest personal opinion (worth as much as you paid for it), if you’re asking what OP did initially, you’re likely a team with limited resources.
This weekend, stay under $50 of new material. Between some PVC pipe and cardboard boxes, you could probably get under $20.
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