With teams like Gremlin and Ruiguan on their way to making working and valid T3 Climb Mechs, a number of questions have raised.
Could a high climb be part of the Meta for next year’s Worlds?
Is it actually worth it?
How will game strategy adapt to include Climb?
How do you even go about making a High Climb?
So I decided it was time to make a Topic to discuss these questions, Share possible designs and answer problems with these Mechs, as well as give your own opinions on the matter.
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Think about last year. Yes, there were a lot of high climbs, but c-tiers were absolutely viable.
Yes. The problem is the skill gap. A good climb is very tough to make this year
Not much. Just a higher emphasis on positioning. Think about spin up endgame and rollers vs expansion.
Gremlin’s looks pretty sweet. I haven’t seen ruigan’s. I don’t think high elevation will be doable for our team considering our experience and timeframe.
I’ve been sad that we haven’t had a good match strategy evolution thread. I will look for a past one and try to revive it after speedway and haunted.
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it will become meta, it is worth it late season. High climb is worth alot of points so teams with high climb could make up for lost points easily. making a high climb will be very tricky. spend a lot of time looking at FTC and FRC climbing robots, pull inspiration, CAD, prototype and keep on trying and refining until it works
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I think it will be meta before then. the last 15 seconds postive corners are protected, more thn enough time to have a robot climb to t3. if one bot climbs and the others stays down to defend, thats 12 points vs the 6. if defense is tight enough and not many goals are scored on, the 24 points is absolutely gigantic. the biggest challenge is fitting a high goal mech onto the robot. with gremlin the triangular body shape is very important to maintain, other wise the mech is going to be super shakey and just scary to use just in case it falls. realistically the mech can prolly be reduced to a pto and some rubber bands, which is pretty realistic by next year imo
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Yes probably. There was a lot of fuss this year over the autonomous bonus being worth to much too a match, and a tier 3 hang is worth twice that much.
Well the main concern with high climbs is the time it takes. The two current t3 hangs take about 9 seconds each, which is plenty of time for an opponent to steal a filled mobile goal and stick it in a negative corner, which is a 16 point swing. Either the GDC extends the corner protection period to include negative corners, or climbs become faster.
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Time will tell how well this ages, but if the GDC wants to encourage climbs, I think a January change that “disables the Negative Zone for an Alliance with a robot at Tier 2 or above” would strike a reasonable (IMO) balance between the difficulty in building these mechs and the time-and-difficulty in executing them in-match.
As it stands, the 17 (or 19 if partner also hangs) points for a T3+High Stake is only marginally more than the 16-point Neg Zone play (and likely at least 1 wall stake), and takes considerably more time and risk. Not to mention the Neg Zone play could neutralize 3 of those.
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I would like to bring up that a robot could climb with a mobile goal in their possession. While I’m not that familiar with how a tier three climb mechanism works, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to climb while clamping a mobile goal. As robot contact with the mobile goal or the rings on it does not impact the rings’ status as scored, robots could keep mobile goals clamped through the end of the match. This greatly reduces risk around the negative corners, especially if the other alliance partner is left to defend the remaining unprotected mobile goal(s).
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I don’t think the GDC will give protection to negative corners. If so, that would be just a free 15s period for climbing and wall stakes only → less activities and actions - > boring → less revenue.
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True, however this year, higher climbs have a significant number of points compared to OU where it was dependent on other robot’s climb. C tier would get 20 - 10 points where as high climb gets 12 points this year (higher margin)
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Definition of Climb precludes a robot from contacting a MoGo:
Granted, they could do a last-second drop of the Mogo, but that would potentially risk popping rings off the Mogo after it impacts the floor.
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Apologies, I forgot about this part of climb rules. Thank you for correcting me.
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I can’t get my teams to look at a t2 climb right now, why? Because the GDC changed the rules at the last minute last year and they felt like they wasted all their time. So this year they have told me they are going to wait for the February update before designing anything. I wish the GDC would come out with some strong statement that would encourage teams to work on the climb now.
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Your team seems to be making a rational decision. Why do you want them to do a T2 climb, especially w/r/t the Student-Centered policy. I know as a spectator and referee, it is disappointing to see the main focal point of the game being largely ignored, but when looking at the cost-benefit of using it, it sure does seem like teams are being rational in ignoring it.
Personally, I do like that the GDC publicizes the dates of major game-changing rules updates. They were responsive to Wall Stakes post-Mall, and while I believe they should reduce the Auton bonus, can see why they held off on that based on the theory of incomplete data (even though I disagree, I think it was a good-faith difference). I think the elevation change last year was a good one, and breathed some new-life into the strategy of the game.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I hope the GDC rewards T2 climbs by turning off the negative zone for that alliance. I think that would offer compelling strategic decisions to teams trying for higher climbs. I believe that the GDC understands that climbs are currently underused, and made the climb intentionally hard to give the game a reason for the meta to evolve. As we saw at Haunted, they may have made it too hard and not rewarding enough. Based on last year, I think they’ll make a reasonable rule change in January.
I do wish that the January Major Update was scheduled for mid-December to give teams the Christmas break to digest and work on changes.
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GDC gonna GDC,
They did release a statement, the game manual, currently there is no major disincentive to climb.
You can get to some competitions before February…
Main question is, what do you mean by “can’t get them to look at”.
Is that a, “y’all gonna do a climb?” Or pressuring them to do a climb?
Remember, VEX is a student centered competition
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@dale.crowder I’ll add that maybe you can get your team talking about why it might be helpful to start prototyping/testing a climb now in case it does become more important later. Even though it’s not super helpful in most matches today, my team decided to start figuring out how to build one this week because they anticipate it might be a big advantage in January/February. And if it’s not, well, now they have experience building a PTO. Think of all the notebook pages…
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Seems like being honest here gets you attacked. Last year my teams worked weeks on climbing the pole to get a C tier. Right before state the GDC changed the rules and allowed groups to hook into the top of the pole. My teams and honestly myself felt wronged by the GDC for giving in and changing the rules so the teams that didn’t spend the time on the process could just grab the top.
@Mentor_355U if they can find a solution to t2 then the solution for t3 will come automatically because of wanting to score more points. I like your idea of negating the negative corners with a t2 climb, maybe that will be adopted.
@Joeboticswastaken “can’t get them to look at” is referring to get them to spend time on the climb because of last year.
@355Y-Coach most of the teams have worked the engineering notebook through brainstorming for the climb, but have stopped because they want to see if the GDC will change the rules. At this point, with no other teams climbing, they and I believe time is better spent driving and continuing to work strategy.
My main point of my post was to ask the GDC to make a statement that they will NOT change the rules to allow teams to just hook in the top of the ladder and pull themselves up.
I also believe my teams are justified to wait, sure … I want to see them do flips on the top tier, this is why I’ve asked them to work the define the problem and brainstorm ideas so they are ready either way, but we have adopted the “fool me once shame on you” philosophy.
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The problem is that T3 or T2 climb right now is essentially a gamble, given how much the GDC has changed rules in past years. For all we know, the GDC could change climb rules in January (like they did last year) to make it easier, basically invalidating all the work teams put into climb. On the other hand, they might reward climb even more, like they did at the start of this year with the updated High Stake point values and the extra corner protection time. Obviously, time spent on climb could be spent improving other aspects of the robot and vice versa. Teams have to gamble on what to build because of the GDC’s indecisiveness.
Sure, the decision is ultimately the students’, but I think @dale.crowder might be trying to show his students that the GDC is often neither consistent nor rational when it comes to late-season rule changes. That’s something his students might not (and should not) be expecting and might necessitate a little more mentor involvement. Right now, given last year’s climb, climb might seem like a bad choice, but GDC’s decisions so far this year make it seem like they want to reward climb. His students might have only seen last year’s rule changes and be expecting the pattern to repeat, but maybe a mentor has more experience and knows that this will not always be the case. Robotics and engineering are student-centered because they are skills that students should take away from the program. That’s the entire point of the program. Does that apply to the rule-guessing surrounding climb? Is that an essential skill students need, or does the benefit of students seeing their hard work succeed outweigh the loss of GDC prediction skills?
I think what @dale.crowder is trying to say is that the GDC needs to make up their mind in order to not arbitrarily hurt teams that made a rational decision about climb with a last second rule change.
They did release a statement, but as can be seen last year, it gives very little indication of where the rules will actually fall in February. What happens to a team that dedicated most of their time to a T3 climb if GDC changes the rules in January to allow you to just winch all the way to the top? Do they just lose because their opponents put all that time into things the GDC arbitrarily decides are more important? Should teams have to predict what the GDC will decide in order to succeed? Is that really what VEX is about?
I absolutely agree with this. Even if they decide climb shouldn’t be a huge part of the game, they need to make up their mind before teams dump huge amounts of time into something the GDC ultimately removes.
Sorry for the long post.
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I’m sorry it came across as an attack. Wasn’t meant to be. I think everyone here is trying to help you brainstorm ideas to help your team move forward not feel stuck.
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Forgive me,
But surely the teams should get to decide what they spend their time on?
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My take is that the GDC has moved to a tiered rollout for endgame, beginning last year. It seems (to me) that they don’t want endgame “solved” in the first two months of the season anymore. They want to save some challenge for later in the season, and allow the game to change a little. I appreciate the effort to leave room for everyone to have to brainstorm a little more down the road, if this is the new “normal.” A late-season winch climb last year didn’t guarantee success. But it did give a new challenge to teams who were ready for one.
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