And robots are just gonna look bad now 
Again, trying to get people to buy more parts
I totally agree, and I just want to ask why something as creative and unique as color metal is getting banned. For many clubs, this will pose a significant financial hardship to which could leave their club broke. And guess where that leaves us, with students who leave STEM, leave vex, and leave the programs that could have had a life-changing impact, and driven them to consider entirely different careers. Frankly, considering Vex is a āstudent-centered gameā, I find it appalling that the game designers said āwe know you want a shooting gameā and then did everything in their power to make the robots look like they were from 2016, exactly against the studentsā wishes. And now, from an attractiveness perspective, what new students are going to be attracted by a slow-paced game with robots that look exactly the same? Why does vex think that this will attract more students to vex, as opposed to a fast-paced, stunning game like High Stakes with easily identifiable, differently colored robots? Finally, the AI vision sensor-based aspect of the game is extremely financially hard for many clubs, and considering that the sensors rarely actually work, this part of the game just feels like a complete cash grab from Vex. Please vex, if you are reading this, there is still time. The students have spoken, but if we continue like this, I donāt think many students will continue with vex, and much less with engineering. Is that what we really want?
Id be very funny (sarcastic voice) If vex turns around and sells there own colored C-channel, And raises the prices.
@bkahl can you please explain the GDCs reasoning for these rules? Last year I could understand why you limited plastic and banned plates, but I can not think of a single reason to ban coloring. What rule was being abused?? If this is about the vision sensors, there was already a rule in place, to me it seems like vex just wants everyone to rebuy a ton of parts.
i find this a bit confusing, could someone please clarify it with examples?
SG10, So you can pick up you own colored scoring objects but not the opposing alliances. SG9 There are 4 colored goals on the field 2 red 2 blue if you are on red Alliance you cant remove pins from the blue Alliance goals.
There was a claim about it interfering with color sensors and ai sensors. Personally Iāve never seen this happen in any of my competitions but thatās what vex said. (According to kkaidenn)
I am very disappointed in the new color rules. I knew that a ban on painted channels was coming, and without a very large budget teams can definitely remove all the paint with acetone soaks and a little bit of effort, but where I have an issue is in the ban on dyed gears. To my knowledge, there is no way to un-dye gears, and that is a huge issue. My team bought a large number of parts from a team that retired before us, all of which were painted/dyed black. On top of that, I dyed most of the rest of our gears later on for our various rebuilds throughout the season. Our WHOLE inventory of gears and sprockets and chain is now useless.
This isnāt just happening to 40000A; because dyeing parts is relatively cheap, (as low as 10 dollars for an entire part inventory) many, MANY teams are now going to be mass ordering replacements, and I have my doubts that they will arrive in time for teams seeking to go to earlier events. If the GDC does not want to revoke this rule, I hope they might add a temporary clause that this rule only takes place after a certain date to ensure teams can replace their inventories fully.
instead of spending all of this money on new parts are we allowed to change our dyed black gears back to red with dye, even though it might not be perfect.
As we all know there is a ban on coloring this year, but our team uses colored screws from Robosource, will we have issues?
Is it just me, or does the new game feel really similar to VEX IQ Mix & Match? It seems like the creativity from the GDC is starting to rely too heavily on ideas from previous games in other competitions, instead of bringing something completely new and original.
That would also break the possession limit
I watched a few videos saying that they are trying to prevent teams from using knock-off C-channel and other parts by requiring the logo to remain visible. Although most of our metal is older and doesnāt have logos, unless I missed it.
no i totally agree it seems very similar
I mean, if you do good enough job on the coloring they wont notice.
does this mean we can still descore from the grey goals?
You can NOT descore from neutral/alliance goals.
I think I will start sanding off the VEX logos on my c channels/stuff as a little protest as it isnt banned like how people did get rid of their tesla logos!
The Q&A opens may 14, 2026.