What are your opinions on v5 motor cap? (or build restrictions generally)

#1

Ok so v5 is op with all it’s fancy programing and motors. but it has one problem, only can only use 6 or 8 v5 motors which causes every robot to be kinda same-y.

general speaking for turning point, you would want to have a:

4 motor drive,
2 motor ball launcher (puncher+angler, flywheel+indexer)
1 motor intake (roller)
1 motor descorer/scraper

you can obviously deviate from this general format, but 2 motor drive imo isn’t viable. so you technically have 4 motors to do as you please and imo this isn’t a lot of wiggle room and pneumatics probably isn’t viable because you can’t do much with 2 free motors depending on your design.

I really like vexu build restrictions especially see VUR520%20AM
And i particularly like frc build restrictions where it’s pretty much anything goes, but that is besides the point.

I’m the builder on my team and the shenanigans I could cause with that would be NUTS
I could make super fast lifts and etc. but then again i don’t want to cause the following

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVWWiT_2S14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi0Z8bZRHMQ&

I would really like to add VUR5 to vrc but probably be super unbalanced with people having like 16 motor drives or something else annoying like that and we’re probably going to get another “Ships in 8 Weeks” wave.

Maybe adding 2-6 motors is a happy medium, and maybe pneumatics would be viable again (bring back transmissions)

What do you guys think?

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#2

Honestly, I could see them making the motor cap 10 for next year. However, I think that changing the rules now would, like you said, create a massive unbalance for Worlds. But hey, you never know. If they introduced Bo1 last year, what’s to stop them from making another significant rule change this year?

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#3

They probably won’t change V5 restrictions until after Cortex is phased out and banned. But, at that point, people will be so used to 8 motors that it’ll seem kind of OP and radical to increase the motor allotment. (VexU gets unlimited motors because (I think) they always have, and cortex is already banned, so there’s no “keeping Cortex competitive” competitive.)

Plus, you sometimes see better engineering with limited motors. Linked mechanisms are awesome, and they wouldn’t really exist without the need for one motor to power more than one thing.

At some point, it would be nice to have more V5 motors, but they can’t keep Cortex competitive if they really up the ante for V5 restrictions.

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#4

I agree, motors will probably be upped to 10 or even 12 once cortex is phased out. Something has to use all those ports.

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#5

What I would like to see is the motor count be based on volume. A robot that fits in a 12^3 volume is allowed unlimited motors, 15^3 is allowed 12 and 18^3 is allowed 8. Some variation of this with maybe just to sizes would be fine also.

3 Likes
#6

I like that idea. Inspection would end up being much more complicated and time consuming though, seeing as there would need to be 3 different sizing tools and different rules for each size. It’d be really fun though.

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#7

Not just new sensors that might or might not come out lol. Granted we already fried 4 of ours xD

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#8

As has been pointed out before, I believe that the V5 motor limit will remain in place as long as the Cortex is still allowed for competition.

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#9

I’m intrigued by the idea of a motor-volume ratio. It would definitely lead to some interesting strategies around making smaller robots. Since it would also allow various amounts of motors, it doesn’t put up as much of a paywall as completely unlimited motors. I think vex could also maybe benefit from a weight limit and less restrictive material/size limits, similar to FRC. A limited amount of 3-D printed parts would be very useful, and hopefully not disadvantage teams with less or no access to 3-d printing. Unlimited lexan would also be fun.
On other build restrictions, I’m really not a fan of the 36" cylinder expansion rule. I understand that it’s to prevent gamebreaking things like wallbots, but it also prevents tetherbots and other interesting strategies.
Side note: I feel like unlimited cortex motors could have been fine, because there are limited ports and you can’t run too many motors at once without tripping circuit breakers. But with v5, you can run so many motors with a lot less of the problems of cortex.

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