Skills seems very Easy this year. Robots will only need to move 18 objects (6 of which could be loaded like the 32 balls) to the other side of the field and the 10 stars on the fence will easily be knocked off in 5-10 seconds. Then it will be up to luck as to whether or not all of the objects bounce into the far zone for max score.
Well, there are actually 28 objects on the field, so to get all of them you need to be scoring once every second or so. Not actually every second, as in you could collect a lot and score them at once, but basically your time per unit object scored is almost 1 to 1 in seconds. Seems pretty difficult. I think we will see some cleared fields, but I could imagine it would be very difficult to get all of the objects in the far zone, let a lone the stars on the fence. I think hitting them just gets them to the near zone, so you may need to impart a lot of energy when you hit them, or grab them off the fence.
I think the challenge eill be consistently getting everything on the far zone. Also enough time to hang. Even so. That is what I predited, there will be some perfect scores.
I think the hardest part of skills will be the starts on the fence. They are usually considered easy to get, but I think just hitting them and they will end up in the near zone. Getting them all in the far zone will be hard.
I agree, the bouncing does seem pretty unpredictable. But who knows, maybe once more teams get their hands on the scoring objects they’ll find ways of consistently getting them into the far zone. In any case, I’m not necessarily saying luck is a good strategy, but if a team does a skills challenge many times, chances are one of those times a high percentage of stars will end up in the far zone as opposed to the near zone.
Programming skills will be very hard this year because of the stars of the fence. Hanging also would have to be very precise since most teams will hang through the top of the tube.