[FTC]: Thoughts on new FTC game?

Other FIRST Tech Challenge
1

So what do the people who have seen the game think? My first reaction was that it is ok, but there are some things I really don’t like much:

  • Hockey Pucks are ok, kind of depends on how much FIRST charges us for a set, I hope it’s not too expense to get a full set of game pucks.
  • the field size didn’t change from the vex fields, so that’s good. But does anyone know how much a field costs or where we get it from?
  • the inside of the field worries me. The different square sections of different materials in the four quadrants of the field are all short and don’t seem that difficult, but it seems like there is a huge amount of construction time and cost required to build this field. I assume FIRST will be selling the field structures and goals, but does anyone know how much it is and where we get it?
  • I don’t understand having 1 team on each alliance starting on the field and 1 team on each alliance starting on a platform off the field floor in autonomous. I’m not sure how they decide which team starts where, but my guess is that most teams are going to want to start on the floor.
  • I get that the sqaure, triangle, circle center goal structure is for the FIRST logo, but it sure seems like that is forced into the game. I hope it doesn’t make it too hard or expensive to buy or build.
  • those are my first thoughts. I might like it more after we review it on Monday, but right now I’m a little disappointed. It thought it would be a little more challenging with the new kits but also a little cheaper to do, but it looks like this might cost us a lot of money to play.
2

This game (if this info is real) isn’t impressing me at all. But the real problem is the fact that the Tetrix building system didn’t give FIRST or FTC the opportunity to make a really neat diverse game like umm… I duno: Quad Quandary.

This game shows the decline of FTC due to this Lego power hungry move. It is what it is: disappointing.

-Smith

3

Dude, the game looks awesome! I can’t wait to start brainstorming with my team.

4

as i see you can go up onto your opponents ramp to get the 10 point bonus twice, also <SG4> is a bit confusing whecoupled with the fact that a puck can be scored twice once in autonomous, once in teleoperated?

5

I like the game, and I think it will be quite a challenge,

Love the unloaders, the ground traps should be interesting (there a little small), and the robot drop platform is cool.

But I have a few small gripes so far,

Pucks and rings are too similar, and the field looks some what difficult to build.

Besides these I think its going to be a great game.

6

Very disappointing.

The game itself, has some neat elements but the point is I don’t see anything there that VEX couldn’t do. FIRST promised us these kits would change the face of the competition, but I don’t really see that here.

Last year was our rookie year, and this year we took a financial gamble on the new FTC kit and the promise that nothing other than the base kit would be required. But there’s no way we’re even going to come close to being able to duplicate the field on our own. It’s like they decided to randomly throw stuff onto the field without thinking of the teams that have to build the elements. Is a platform/ramp cool? Well sure. Can our team build one, and know how to match the same dynamics/weight characteristics of theirs? No. Can we afford to buy a FIRST-supplied one? No. So that leaves us with hockey pucks to play around with. Woowee.

7

Not so much bad, as could be a lot better. Just dosen’t feel unique enough. The racks make the acquisition of the puck shape kind of a non-challenge, as a bin approach is as easy or easier than individual object manipulation. As I said in the other thread, the “capture and trap all of your opponent’s gamepieces” strategy seems a bit too easy compared to scoring. I’m not a big fan of one central scoring structure, as it allows one robot to effectively defend the whole thing.

The endgame, however, is very unique, although possibly a bit damaging to the robots, if they fall. Longer autonomous is always nice to see, although I’m not sure that 30 seconds is completly necissary for the tasks avalible autonomously. I think that there may be problems determining if autonomous gamepieces are scored at the end of the match.

FIRST still hasn’t shown me a clear-cut reason for ditching VEX. We will be playing Elevation this year, mostly due to cost issues. We just don’t have the resources to “creativly use our lexan and aluminum” by any standard, or pay for all the inflated costs of the Tetrix set compared to VEX. And, although I’m sure more advanced parts are on the drawing board, VEX simply allows us to do more than Tetrix, as of now.

I hope FIRST made the right decision here…

8

Be sure to stay in touch with your FTC APs. They can carry your improvement suggestions to FIRST HQ.

9

I like it and I hope the 6 teams that I (and MORT) will be mentoring will enjoy it as well. See you all on the field:cool:

10

You’ve got some options here:
a) Link up with any other FTC teams in the area and go in on field components together.
b) FIRST will put out drawings for the field; for Quad Quandary, the field elements beyond the barrier ran a couple hundred dollars. You can probably get away with a partial field if it’s just your team. I’m not saying it’ll be free, but it shouldn’t run you a bajillion-million dollars.
c) You’ve got the drawings for the field (or should get them soon). From there, you can figure out where your arm needs to be. If you don’t know the forces required on some official field element, there’s always Q&A.

I’d advise you to look up some of the FRC robots from 2004; ComBBAT and the FemBots come to mind. They used large hoppers to hold all of the balls that dropped from above that year, and both were a little clunky at getting them back out.

As I said in the other thread, the “capture and trap all of your opponent’s gamepieces” strategy seems a bit too easy compared to scoring. I’m not a big fan of one central scoring structure, as it allows one robot to effectively defend the whole thing.
I’m going to make a bold prediction here: against competent opponents, no alliance is going to be able to trap every single opposing puck. The racks are just too far apart for any team to be able to hit them all. At most, I’m predicting that an alliance could trap two racks, one per robot.

I’m not sold on the defense options you lay out. You’ve got 18" robots going around a cylinder that’s 24" inches diameter and thus 75" circumference–over six feet around. I’m not sure how fast you can get a new-kit robot to go, but I’m betting you’d want a second robot to achieve ideal coverage. Hope you’ve got all the pucks you’re gonna score by then, because I’m willing to bet that the other alliances will be glad to take that time to whisk away your pucks.

11

Personally, I think this game is quite similar to the previous year’s, though of course it’ll still be a nice challenge.

My primary concern is with the field. I think it’ll be hard to build the springboard that is used to get onto the field as well as other field elements. Are they going to be selling all of this?

12

Even if they don’t sell you a whole kit, they have historically given the exact part numbers along with the source. They know there have to be dozens of fields made to hold tournaments, so they tend to shy away from unobtanium.

13

I just hope the field parts are reasonably easy to build/obtain without FIRST’s help. The reason?

Last year we bought a field and didn’t recieve the parts until the night before our first competition. One of the many reasons why we spectacularly failed that day. :smiley:

But otherwise, I’m looking forward to this game. Yeah, it is similar to QQ but it’s different in enough aspects that it’s going to be a radically different game, and there’s plenty of good defensive options if you look hard enough. (Hint: it’s not just grabbing your opponent’s pucks, it’s what you do with them…:wink: )

Also, big hoppers are going to be great, but being able to pick pucks off the floor reasonably fast and distinguish their color is key. If you can’t do that, all the other alliance has to do is spill your racks to destroy you.

14

O.k. It’s time for Cody to dish out a long tedious post here.

First, lets look at the cooperate structure here. The first thing the “animation” showed us was this epic looking and big history of FTC portrayed as if VEX and IFI was never ever a part of FTC. Vex wasn’t even mentioned! It also portrayed FTC as if it was some god child of FRC (which may be true). And then they went on to explain why this new FTC is a perfect mix of FLL and FRC.

Just like I said this is a new FTC, not the old FTC. So I’m going to name it something else, welcome to the FIRST Tech Lego Challenge. Or FTLC.

FTLC features a perfect mix of FLL and FRC from a game field that is almost impossible for every team to build to a budget that is impossible for everyone to afford to cute little Lego’s that the little kids can identify with.

Some FRC elements include the four large motors that are symbolic to the four SIM motors FRC is allowed. The ability to cut aluminum and polycarbonate also shows how FTLC is just like FRC!

Some FLL element include LEGOS! Yay, we like Legos!!! They even gave us a little Lego man, isn’t he cool!?! Let’s put him on the bot because we can, he’s part of the $900 dollar kit our director broke his back to buy us! Yays!!! Legos…

What FIRST did was to kill FTC as we knew it and to invent FTLC. The good old FTC is still here, it just got renamed to VRC with good old IFI who have been royally slapped in the face by either Lego or FIRST, I really can’t tell.

Now if your coming from FLL you probably love this more than anything because it’s a 500% beefed up version of what you were already doing. However if your were on FTC/FRC then you probably liked the fact that Vex allowed you to do more complicated stuff than FRC while you got more hands on time, a long build time and a more dynamic competition.

If that’s the case then your on the short end of the stick and will either suck it up and do FTLC or beg your director to start a VRC team.

NOW, the issue of the game. Welcome to the first, FIRST Tech Lego Challenge game: Face-Off (Oooo… “scary” title). This game is as wacky as the many FLL games but lacks the hidden political views of FLL with the simple sports like game elements the FRC games use.

Thats it! Go play (once your motor controllers from HiTonics decide to show up)…

You can love me or hate me, this is nothing more than my view. I dono about all of you guys but I’ll be at both VRC and FTLC. I’ll just enjoy one more than the other.

-Smith

15

My biggest complaint after having seen the video is the fact that puck acquisition is completely one-sided, it’s all based on having a knocker, or having a grabber, and like someone said, making it way too easy to horde the opponent’s stuff. Not to mention I dislike the fact that ALL scoring revolves around the center.

Edit: Oh yes, and as a referee, how do you track the exact puck scored during autonomous to see if it gets double at the end?

16

Well there is a usual pause from autonomous to controlled mode, the referees can make sure then.

Edit: There is no extra points for scoring during autonomous.

17

what you do is take the score after autonomous, and then add it to the score after teleoperated

18

As I read the rules, a puck can score twice, but not double. Once at the end of auto, and once again at the end of tele. If it’s not there at the end of tele, it doesn’t score a second time.

19

The difference I see there is that the preferred strategy in FIRST Frenzy with a giant hopper would be to then force them out the bottom of the robot, relativly few at a time, into the human load chute (or whatever it was called.) With this, simply flipping your hopper onto the goal seems ideal.

I’m going to make a bold prediction here: against competent opponents, no alliance is going to be able to trap every single opposing puck. The racks are just too far apart for any team to be able to hit them all. At most, I’m predicting that an alliance could trap two racks, one per robot.

I agree that it would be a stretch for every single puck to be captured on a regular basis, but I still think that this will hamper the game in more ways than one. First, it contributes to the issue I pointed out earlier, if good teams are capturing and scoring with an entire rack at once, pucks are already running out fast. The ability to descore from the circle and triangle may be more important than anyone thinks. Also, I just don’t really like the concept of the strategy. Just feels like its more a way to win a competition than get inspired about science and technology. But that’s just me.

I’m not sold on the defense options you lay out. You’ve got 18" robots going around a cylinder that’s 24" inches diameter and thus 75" circumference–over six feet around. I’m not sure how fast you can get a new-kit robot to go, but I’m betting you’d want a second robot to achieve ideal coverage. Hope you’ve got all the pucks you’re gonna score by then, because I’m willing to bet that the other alliances will be glad to take that time to whisk away your pucks.

Once again, I don’t think that this will happen on a regular basis. However, the central scoring structure, by nature, creates traffic jams, and a skilled driver should be able to hold off at least one, and possibly two offensive robots, particularly if they are approaching from the same side.

20

Hmmm - A story comes to mind.

Once upon a time, in the Hangin’-A-Round World Championships, I saw a team use a robot with a well-built arm to cleanly and deftly pluck a softball out of the hopper of an opponent’s bot.

There was no entanglement or other inappropriate occurrence during the well-executed maneuver.

I whooped out loud, and spent the next 5 minutes with a big grin on my face. If I had been a judge…

Blake