During the New Hampshire Week Zero event we saw more damage to the springs (‘pegs’ in the manual and drawings) and spring points on the gear lifts than we had expected based on our testing. Springs were getting bent such that they did not return to their original shape and points were being broken. But we have some things we’re doing to improve this situation.
Most immediately, we are providing events with extra replacements.
We are also switching to a new point design. You can see the new design here. The new point design uses slightly thinner material than the original (0.19 inches versus 0.25 inches), but otherwise the point has same shape, at least on the portion that extends from the spring. Also, it is made of LDPE instead of ABS, and is more likely than the prior design to bend rather than break during gear loading. At events, you may see a mix of both types of points in use. The LDPE material does have some tendency to move back to its original shape when bent, but during matches pilots in airships can use their hands (assuming they don’t reach outside the airship) to help the material return to the original shape if they feel a point is bent to an extent that will interfere with gear transfer.
Also, we are investigating ways to reduce damage to the springs themselves, through a change to mounting. This change is not likely to be ready for this weekend, though we continue to work on it.
With all these changes, we are attempting to retain the form and basic behavior of the original design as much as possible, while at the same time making them more robust.
Field personnel will be keeping watch for damage to these elements during events, as they do all other elements on the field, but if you see a spring or spring point that looks like it needs attention, please point it out to a volunteer working the field.
We will be formally incorporating any design changes we make in future Team Updates, but we wanted to give you a heads up about these in advance, as you will see some changes at events this weekend. We’ll also be doing a supplemental email blast to all teams about this.
Thanks for your patience as we determine the best way to solve these issues!
Did Frank or anyone on the GDC ever comment on the reasoning behind using springs? I have a few hypotheses myself but it would be interesting to see the actual reason.
I’m not surprised at all, 610 hosted ~14 teams to practice at our school over the last weekend of build and we bent all of our springs the first day. There were probably over a dozen of them bent, we tried everything from bending them back to taping them, it was pure carnage. ::ouch::
Once defense gets involved in the game springs are going to get bent very frequently. Also springs are going to get ripped out of their tracks pretty often, FIRST really should have seen this coming when they didn’t make gear scoring a safe zone…
This is good but from what I’ve seen here at Hub City, not enough. There were at least four or five broken springs today, and that was just in an afternoon of half full practice matches.
In addition to breaking easily the springs deform way more than I thought they would (and I expected a lot of deformation) after a couple matches you might as well be putting the gear on a piece of string. There were multiple times where I saw the spring actually bend itself into a loop.
Also, completely not mentioned by this is the new way pilots have to operate the lift. The piece of PVC to prevent the lift handle from falling greatly changes how the lift has to be operated.
The piece of PVC is placed at the top of the porthole opening. This means that a pilot has to grab the lift handle, pull up, reach down, grab the string, pull up some more and then rotate the lift into the airship(without pulling it completely out of the rail or ever having their hands leave the airship).
My pilot informs me that this isn’t incredibly difficult or slow, but I figured I would inform you all because I was surprised when I saw it. I had read about that piece of PVC but I guess I thought it would be placed differently then it was.
So, to recap, in my experience today at Hub City, the springs get really bad really fast, and the lift probably doesn’t move the way you think now.