VEX Friends,
As many of you have noticed, several of the field elements for VEX Robotics Competition Nothing But Net are still unavailable. We at VEX understand how important it is for teams to get these elements in-hand as soon as possible for prototyping. That is why we take any delay in their release very seriously.
Unfortunately, when we received initial shipments of the goals from our manufacturer we found a problem. The plastic corner connectors which hold the goal together were not strong enough to handle normal usage. In particular, we know that event partners and teams will assemble/disassemble the goals multiple times during a season, and were concerned about their long term durability.
We were unable to quickly resolve this issue. After internal discussion we made the decision to delay launch of these products until we felt they met the quality level we expect and our customers demand of VEX products.
This is ultimately a failure by the engineering department, and I personally apologize.
Happily, we have since found a solution to these issues. The goals are now in full production, and we are just waiting for items to arrive. We expect to have these items in-stock by 7/1.
I understand that this is frustrating for many teams who want to get started, but I’m happy that the game objects are now in-stock and teams can start prototyping many aspects of their robot design, even if they don’t have their full field.
If you have any concerns, please contact our sales department.
903.453.0802 sales@vex.com
Thank you for the update. However, why not ship the field set now and later ship out replacement parts? I have a summer program starting beginning of July and this really is a set back. I imagine there are others in the same situation.
Since it will be a long time before we get the goals and can find out for ourselves, roughly how many balls fit in the high goal? That number is critical to the strategy of this game and the strategy is critical to the design, so if we have an approximate measurement then teams will be able to get further with their designs before they get hold of actual fields.
It would also be helpful to know how many balls can be scored in a low goal.
I’m pretty sure we would be running events starting in June if we could (we did last season), so this will affect us.
While I understand that VEX wants to maintain a high quality standard, perhaps it would be possible to ship out the faulty ones at a discount, at least to the events that need them sooner?
I guess we have to figure the capacity out on our own. I’m going out on a limb for the low goal and say since the bare pipe is 51.38" long (and that’s the length that will accommodate the balls), it can hold 14 balls. Since the floor to top of bare pipe is 7.38"( that would be 1 more row of balls since ball is 4.00") that would securely hold 28 balls. Now the high goal behind the bare ball is tilted backwards so balls can lay on the netting and be ABOVE the bare bar, so many more balls can be scored, however and this is a big however, the net is springy and balls will be bouncing off like a basketball backboard. So until we get the goals, I’ll say 30-40 balls.
Singapore championship is always at the end of June. We are always the 1st few world-qualifying competitions around.
It was always a month of sleepless nights for us in June.
Think last season we were the 1st full robot review too
Interesting, I did not know this. What are your personal thoughts on that, do you like it? I know for my team we would never be able to build the quality of robot that we are capable of building in only 2 months. But we are quite limited on hours that are available to work per week.
Well, pros and cons.
But I have to say that the standard for singapore championship is very high (for an early event).
It is not uncommon to see how singapore championship skills challenge scores at the top 30 or near top 30 even at the end of the season.
Anyway, having it early means we can test our ideas early and then (hopefully) settled on what we want for worlds, giving us a longer runway to prepare for worlds.
But of course, early event is always a killer for beginners teams.
So that’s where that design came from! In the Autumn last year we saw a number of teams show up to tournaments with very similar designs and we wondered where the kids had gotten their idea. I guess you must have a large fan club on the internet!
Why do you have a championship so close to the release date? Most kids here can’t even get a chassis up and running (in the right direction) until September or so.
The definition of “Scored”. It does not say objects must be touching the foam tile, but it does say:
I’m guessing this is where he saw this. I’m not positive if that was the intent of the rule, but it appears to say that if the balls are stacked on top of each other and not touching the goal itself in any way, they would not count. Seems weird they would limit the number of low scoring opportunities so drastically. A lot of robots will only be able to score in the low goal.
To further 4149G’s response, the definition of Low is quoted below.
Between this and the scored definition that 4149G posted, the rules read that balls do have to be touching the foam tiles to be counted as a floor goal.
Is somebody going to ask about this in the official Q&A? If true, such a restriction makes the design of the robot and the overall scoring strategy MUCH more interesting.
