Hello Vex Forumers,
After explaining my drivtrain idea to my brother, I told him that it should be powerful, and ther isn’t a need for speed, while he countered that speed is key for this game. What are your thoughts? Should the (majority of drivetrains) be super speedy, or powerful, or a good mix of both?
Quite a few teams had direct drive with the high-speed internally geared 393s on 4" wheels at worlds, and I expect that will be fairly popular in this game too. 1:2 for speed used to be fairly popular if I remember correctly, but it seems people are going for more force now, perhaps because of heavier game objects this year and last.
Or, you could have both torque and speed.
Well you always have each, the problem is how much of one or the other do you think will be best for the task at hand.
Gear shifters really do give you options for both though, if you’re up for that challenge.
Our team is up for that challenge!
I feel that it will have to do with the strategy of each team, it will also depend on the weight of the bot. Obviously if there is some rediculous contraption going to be built, you will want more torque unless its suprizingly light, otherwise, if its going to be the weight of a NZ bot from this year, you could do speed.
I have a feeling that we will see both speed and torque this year. There’s a lot of designs possible for this game and I’m excited to see the creativity. 
We would do a transmission, but our pneumatics are to be utilized for other purposes. We like 4 high-torque motors, with a 1:1 ratio (or equivalent connection), 4" wheels, and some weights on the base, because the robot isn’t really slow, but will win pushing matches with most of the speed-bots. In the Gateway season, there were only 1 or 2 robots in Michigan that could push our robot. But they weren’t as fast as us, so we beat them anyway.
torque is almost always better… unless the opponent’s robots cannot touch you under any circumstances… bots get rammed way too much so torque is the only safe thing in vex these days…
Omni drive with a high gear ratio and they won’t be able to catch up to you.
BOTH!!! High gear ratio with two 2 wire motors on each side
5:1 for speed, with a ten motor drive 
If you’re going to run away from the ramming robot, then you’re giving the rammer just what it wants… which is to move you away from where you are.
There are two troughs. With an omni drive, you could easily reach the other a few seconds ahead of the ramming robot
torque. You will need torque to push and climb sacks.
Is direct drive a good thing to have on a robot? It seems pretty good because of torque and speed but I don’t really Know.
after seeing aperture at worlds with internal speed gearing
i`m going with torque because we did not have a chance against any robot really
There is no one “solution” really between torque and speed. Both have advantages in different situations… the question is which situations occur more often.
could someone send my information on how to build a gear shift?
After a couple of seasons of using drives that were geared too high, we aren’t taking any chances this year. 1:1 direct, or possibly an 84T:60T ratio for a 1.4 speed increase. Being dead on the field with 30 seconds left just looks bad.
Why not a transmission? You will have speed, yet have power