I don’t understand what you mean by saying there’s no relationship between the two? To qualify for worlds (Cortex + V5) you need to do well at Nationals (Cortex only). The relationship is that Nationals participation is a prerequisite for worlds (exceptions being previous year winners invitations, of which we have none).
There’s a difference between the financial investment and then the other type of investment required to build a robot - effort. I completely agree that most will rebuild, but without the experience of knowing V5 it would take a lot longer to create a robot that’s of high quality. Not everyone has had the luxury that you and I have had with the beta program in already having an idea of how well the motors perform, experience of VCS, etc. For the confident teams you mention, I think it would be unadvisable to spend any time on V5 before Nationals, Bo1 as you say means that you want to devote as much time as possible into perfecting every part of your robot with the Cortex system. Diverting some of that away into learning V5 would be a bad idea IMO.
I remember multiple instances of teams in the past that started in the new year and for whom their first events were the scrimmages just before Nationals. This needn’t necessarily be a new school either, but could just be an additional team at an existing organisation, etc. We also had a new team come to their first event at the last scrimmage, which I feel kind of bad about that they just invested in Cortex.
I also don’t think it’s an invalid argument. Not every team going to Nationals has to be an A-tier robot. Even if a new team only builds a basic drive + cap flipper I’m sure they’d still have a good time.
Again, what would be the bad thing about having teams on multiple platforms? VEX / RECF clearly decided that was okay by allowing both systems and the different motor limits. If you think that V5 will be OP and hence are limiting it to nerf that approach then say that, which despite your arguments, I still think will negatively affect NZ’s chances at worlds (I guess we’ll see). If you think that V5 is worse then why does it need to be banned?
People want transparency and to know what’s going on. If the decision has been made then it’s a super important one and there should have been a blog post / announcement to all the teams already (I can’t find one). If a decision hasn’t been made then this is definitely the kind of thing that also should have been communicated to teams beforehand in case anyone did do their own importing as you said. I don’t know if there’s been updates to the other schools keeping them updated, but if it’s just those who have teachers as part of the NPG then I feel the inside information there could be a bit of an issue. Imagine if a school had bought V5 after you make the decision but before it’s publicly announced. That would be terrible.
Again, my whole thing just comes back to how well NZ is going to perform at worlds. I really don’t want to see NZ continue the trend of falling further down towards the middle of the VRC. I feel that restricting the use of V5 at Nationals will most definitely restrict the use of V5 at Worlds by NZ teams, or produce sub-par implementations of them. Which basically means that the RSM is betting on Cortex being better than V5 at Worlds, or we’re going to fall even further backwards.