Storm the Castle B

[pokegman]

Just got back from regionals. Places 3rd in Compute This but Storm the Castle was a mess. The event supervisor got sick so a volunteer ended up running the event. The volunteer didn't have the CW weight or the projectile weight so he ended up taking a CW from another kid in the competition along with a projectile that was 40.5 grams. And slanted rails ARE ILLEGAL. Me and my partner got put down a tier under the rule "The center of gravity of which the axis rotates cannot drop," since the wheels (the axis point) which are on the rails fell. Not a good competition this year

You must've been at the Wayne-Monroe Regional, I was there too. I agree, STC was a mess. For one thing, the supervisor borrowed the counterweight from a team (unfair advantage) and refused to reveal its weight after impound. We were one of just 2 teams to hit the target but distance was more important than accuracy. We hit the target 1 meter away, we probably would have been better off placing our target at 20 feet and landing 1 foot away, or something along that line. Got 11th.

Yeah that's the regional. We placed our target at 7 meters, even though are graph read 7.5, because we didn't know that it had to be in whole meters. We hit 8 meters twice in a row before finally moving our treb back in the box, then missing by .5 meters. And even though the judges really aren't supposed to tell us, they said if we didn't go down a tier (thanks to a construction violation that actually takes energy off our treb), we would have placed top three. And how far away was your target? Oh, and if you saw me there, I was the kid running back and forth in the cross country hoodie trying to find a CW from the science lab, which took about an hour, even though when I got back it turned out they already had the CW and projectile sorted out. That's the reason they couldn't tell anyone what the CW and projectile weight was.

[jjnv]

Our team qualified for the National. At our State tournament, we got this notice about 2 weeks before the tournament day

The following Storm The Castle rules shall be amended and restated as follows:
5 b.) The Launch Score (LS) for each launch will be: LS = TD - 1.5 A + B. Projectiles that launch directly into a wall will receive a score of zero.
5 b iii.) The Bonus (B) is 0.25 x TD if the projectile at first impact lands in and stays in the target.

Will the rules change again at the National? We tried very hard to make accurate chart. But the projectile given was not perfectly balanced. So it always lean to the side. No team hit the target that day.

[chalker]

Will the rules change again at the National? We tried very hard to make accurate chart. But the projectile given was not perfectly balanced. So it always lean to the side. No team hit the target that day.

it is VERY unlikely that such a clarification will be in place at nationals. We already discussed the scoring formula issue at a national level and decided to leave it as is for this year (although it will definitely be addressed in next year's rules).

[castle95]

does the hook for the counterweight have to go into a hole or can it hang over a dowel?

[jjnv]

Will the rules change again at the National? We tried very hard to make accurate chart. But the projectile given was not perfectly balanced. So it always lean to the side. No team hit the target that day.

it is VERY unlikely that such a clarification will be in place at nationals. We already discussed the scoring formula issue at a national level and decided to leave it as is for this year (although it will definitely be addressed in next year's rules).

Thank you!

[Friedoyster3]

I do think that if the accuracy score is doubled or increased, the target size should be something along the lines of 40cm minimum.

[fleet130]

does the hook for the counterweight have to go into a hole or can it hang over a dowel?

Again, this is not a scoring requirement. You may attach the counterweight any way you wish as long as it doesn't violate a rule. The specifications about the hole in the rules is to insure the counterweight will fit on your device if you intend to use the hook. If your device doesn't meet the stated specs, the counterweight hook may not fit and you will be unable to attach the counterweight to your device. Under these circumstances, you have no basis for an appeal.



Think of your "dowel" in terms of the specifications.

1. "made from material no more than 6.5 mm thick" - The opening in the hook will be at lease 6.5 mm. This means your dowel should be no more than 6.5 mm in diameter.

2. "a hole at least 9 mm in diameter" - The body of the hook material will be no larger than 9mm in diameter. There should be at lease 9 mm of clear space between your dowel and other parts of your device.

3. "The edge of the hole must be no more than 1 cm from the edge of the material" - The eye of the hook will be at least 1 cm in diameter. Your dowel should be no more than 1 cm in diameter (already limited to 6.5 mm in #1 above).

[Friedoyster3]

Is anyone having issues with the event coordinators choosing CWs that are too big for the launching area? My team missed a trip to nationals because the judges gave us a 2.5 kg CW and the celling was rather low (we hit the celling on the first two shots and we had to adjust our treb to not hit the celling which caused the ball to fly very close to the ground and land 5m off target). If we had a higher ceiling we would have hit the target and gotten at least three ranks higher in storm which would have given us that extra one point we needed to get to nationals.

[wlsguy]

Is anyone having issues with the event coordinators choosing CWs that are too big for the launching area? My team missed a trip to nationals because the judges gave us a 2.5 kg CW and the celling was rather low (we hit the celling on the first two shots and we had to adjust our treb to not hit the celling which caused the ball to fly very close to the ground and land 5m off target). If we had a higher ceiling we would have hit the target and gotten at least three ranks higher in storm which would have given us that extra one point we needed to get to nationals.

This happens all of the time. Out of 6 competitions this year, our team had this issue at 4 of them.
I always thought theory behind impounding copies of the graphes was to allow the event supervisors to check to make sure they don't have this problem.
It doesn't always happen, however.

All I can recommend is making 2 sets of graphs.
I copy is the setup if the ceiling height is not an issue, the other is for short ceilings.
You can then be prepared in case of big CW and low ceilings.

[ichaelm]

Don't bother blaming it on one event. If you only needed one more point, then all the events are equally to blame for preventing you from going to nationals, except for the ones you got gold medals in.