This was brought up in a buried post in a thread from week 0, but after just completing our first event I thought it was important to bring it up.
The real defenses are NOTHING like the wood versions.
If you can, I would highly recommend buying some HDPE sheet and covering your wood defenses with it.
With our wood defenses, our robot crosses them like they’re not even there. With the real defenses, we had some real troubles crossing them. The friction is so different that we had to come up with some new techniques for crossing. I knew it would be different, but we didn’t realize how much. Be warned.
The portcullis on the other hand was much easier on the real field.
That’s always an issue every year. the teams with the most resources have entire real fields. a fair middle ground of teams Frankenstein their own field elements together to get as close to the real one but still staying reasonable about it and then those who either don’t know better or don’t have the resources build what’s in the team drawings… which is always so significantly different it’s almost pointless, but still better than nothing.
Oddly enough since the only experience we had with field elements was off of a scrimmage we went to nearing the very end of building, our robot that was practically just kit of parts actually did better with some of the defenses than at the scrimmage
Its also sort of bad at regionals because the practice field is wood too so it is not close to the field. (and very crowded)
Basically if you can do it on wood that is no guarantee it will work on the field…even the batter, bots were losing traction on.
Our tank treads did awesome, many wheeled bots struggled/got stuck/tipped etc.
After just reading these short few replies I have such mixed feelings for the GDC and this years games. Per the manual landing page…
Team Versions are designed to provide close replicas of the Field, but occasionally dimensions may vary slightly in order to ease construction. Official Field Drawings are the ultimate arbiter of Field Dimensions.
I don’t remember the last time the GDC went out of there way to actually help make it easier for a team to field an “accurate representation of a playing field”, (of course my memory is horrid so maybe they do just that every second tuesday) But the fact is that the GDC this year stopped and recognized that if they had only actually just released the Official field drawings so many teams would be left dead in the water.
The GDC tried so hard to make this game fair and playable to all levels this year…
…And then we go and shovel fries so hard in week 0.5 that the production process gets re designed.
I mentioned this in one of the Palmetto threads… In hindsight, I kind of wish we had put resources into building our own steel/polycarb versions earlier in the season. This is definitely one of the few games in recent memory where the team versions and the actual versions vary this much.
It comes down to the wooden team version being very soft and also providing a different coefficient of friction for treads/tracks/belts/etc. Definitely a learning experience for me.
Our method for climbing over the obstacles relies on enough friction to push the wheels into the obstacles (like rock wall, for instance) with enough force to create enough friction to allow the wheels to climb up and over the obstacle. On the wood version - this works perfectly. On the plastic/metal version - not so good.
What type of wheels were you using if I may ask? This was a concern of mine as well, but I’ll have to wait and see what actually happens next weekend when we get to see the real field.
As said above there is a huge difference from wood, however has anybody found a solution to the drawbridge?
It bends SO MUCH it has become impossible for our robot unless it is held down by another
And it showed at the Palmetto Regional. We loved watching Mittens the robot fly through the outer works. As I recall you guys had some motor trouble in semi finals? I am sorry that you had to lose that way.
I think it is wonderful that you have these resources and are willing to share them with the other teams in your area.
Yeah, that was tough. Our software did not catch a stall event in auton and burned the motors up - bad timing! The robot is so small it runs on a couple 775s on each side. The 775s are awesome but you have to protect them, no stalling allowed.
Glad to help where we can! Some, but not all, of the defenses are very different rendered in steel.
Yes, we had a big problem with this at Mount Olive this weekend. As a few of you may have seen in our reveal video, our autonomous mode was working absolutely perfectly consistently on the wooden practice field, but once we hit the real field we had serious problems, even the change in material on the outer works ramp up to the low bar changed things considerably. Made it extremely difficult for us.
