So as the Starstruck season has begun, I thought we should clarify things.
When teams are talking about slip gears this year it most likely means catapults. I know people have seen the slip gear launchers of last years game, and I think some are getting them mixed up.
Slip Gear catapults look nothing like this year’s punchers. They have arms that rotate back instead of drawing back linearly. I personally do not believe slip gear punchers will work for this game, as they would hit the stars differently every time and if you have seen the cubes, they are very squishy and won’t be all that affected by a small piece (or even large piece) hitting it.
If you have any questions about the differences, either post here or pm me
When people talk about catapults, I think there is not a single moment of impact; instead, the star/cube is moved at the same time as the catapult. This reduces acceleration, which means the cube/star experiences less compressive force between inertia and a point-load, and the star is settled on a plate, so there is no issue with hitting the star off-center and making it spin.
TL;DR: When people talk about catapults, they are more similar to medieval catapults and trebuchets than a rotational puncher.
Yes that is a good example. I wanted to make sure especially for new teams that we differentiate between them to reduce the confusion between launchers
Last year, we changed from a catapult to what we called a “striker arm” because we noticed that having an object on the catapult was heavy and affected performance. So instead of carrying the object through the catapult rotation, we stored up energy and hit a stationary object thereby transferng force from the striker arm to the ball. link text
We debated in our team whether we have a true catapult and after a little research determined that a catapult includes a bucket - so we did not have a catapult. That’s why we renamed it “striker arm.”