While yes, there’s no motor penalty to use pneumatics, there’s still a penalty that I feel many people are handwaving:
You still have to design a pneumatics system into your robot.
This includes mounting the tanks on your robot, mounting the solenoids on your robot, routing hoses, interfacing the cylinders with the rest of your robot, troubleshooting any leaks that you have (or may come up mid-season)… plus you have no compressor - which is huge.
Plus don’t forget that tanks and cylinders are made from stainless steel. There’s a lot of brass in a pneumatics system too. Stainless and brass are heavy materials, which will weigh down your robot.
Let’s also not forget something that even I was surprised by: A lot of tribal knowledge teams had regarding pneumatics has been lost. When was the last time you used pneumatics? When was the last time you used pneumatics with V5? Regaining some of this knowledge may take a non-trivial amount of time.
The race to grab a neutral goal requires you to drive out toward the center of the field. Speed and acceleration are going to be huge for robots that want to win every race. The heavier your robot weighs the slower you’ll accelerate. Want to add more motors to your drivetrain to overcome the weight of your pneumatics system? Well, now you have fewer motors to use elsewhere on your robot for things like scoring rings, lifting goals, lowering platforms, etc.
Yes, you can use unlimited cylinders - but you are limited to the number of actuations you can make since you can’t recharge your pneumatics with an onboard compressor. So it’s not unlimited free energy. Compare this to a V5 motor, which given the current motor usage limits and the V5 battery performance effectively gives you consistent, unlimited usage during a match.
During the 393-era there was a substantial difference in the amount of power a pneumatic cylinder could provide vs. (1x) or even (4x) 393 motors. This was especially true when you factored in PTC limitations and the performance of the battery. This is why the trade off was important.
VRC hasn’t really had a “dodgeball line” mechanic to start a match. The closest parallel I can think of in the robotics world would be the “Can Battle” at the start of a match in FRC’s Recycle Rush.
A lot of teams used pneumatics to deploy their “Can Grabbers”. However, some of the fastest didn’t use pneumatics and actually used motors. Why? Because motors were able to overcome their startup torque and reach full speed faster than the pneumatics system could trigger the solenoid to release air and fill the chamber in the cylinder. We’re talking fractions of a second, but in a race where everyone is basically the same, that’s critical.
Will teams use pneumatics to grab goals this year? Absolutely. It’s a great solution. Is it the only fast solution? No. Once teams start advancing this season and everyone is grabbing goals at basically the same speed teams may start looking at alternatives to give themselves an edge in the race.