I was wondering if anyone could confirm what season V4 will no longer be allowed in. A reply on a forum post from a couple of years ago (here) stated that V4 would be discontinued in 3 years and that was in May 2018. I wanted to confirm if that means this season is the last season or if next season is the last season. That user also could not remember where they got the 3 year number from so that could be completely wrong. I obviously know V5 is much better, but I just want have a deadline for when my team absolutely needs to upgrade.
there has not been an official date as far as I know, and I’m guessing that they don’t plan to make it illegal for competition. there’s no reason to really, eventually the cortex electronics themselves will no longer be available for purchase and the whole thing phases itself out rather nicely. I could be wrong though, this is just my guess. I would try to find a way to get v5 as soon as possible, because it really is that much better than cortex. even though cortex is still legal, it’s pretty much obsolete for competitive use.
why would they give us more power? we already have more than enough for the scale of the games we’re getting.
letting us use 2 of the 5.5w v5 motors per 1 11w v5 motor would be awesome though. would give us much more control over power distribution especially for smaller mechanisms
Wow that was an epiphany for me. Motors: any number and kind, total rated motor value by the manufacture to be less than or equal to 88 watts. Sign me up for that being a rule (wattage value to be discussed)
Why do we need a motor cap? All that it would change is how much weight you’d have (since the 5.5w obviously aren’t precisely half the weight of the 11w).
16 motors is a lot. Even with v4, I think it was capped at 11. By removing any kind of motor limit, it discourages use of chain drives and gear drains. I also think that it removes some of the design challenges associated with managing motors.
Why should there be a challenge with managing motors? In industrial scenarios, it’s more often a concern of power management- and i think that’s an important distinction. Besides, to get the rpm you want (in vex), you’d need gear trains or sprockets anyways…
Glad to see that the half wattage motors are nearly half the weight of regular motors, I was afraid they would be too heavy to be practical, but 90g compared to 155g doesn’t seem too bad.
You need to remember the power capabilities of the Cortex were much lower. I like the 16 motor possibilities, but I’ll bet that teams will be able to do better and more complex designs. And you are discounting taking two motors and putting it on a transmission setup where the power can be directed in. (I’m talking about the two motor transmissions that if both motors are going the same way that full power is that way. )
Remember too that space is an issue, still got to be in that 18" space. So 16 motors becomes an internal space challenge for the design. Of course if they go with the proposed 36" cube, all bets are off.
And the smaller motors don’t appear to come with 100,200,600 speed cartridges, so they will need some gearing.
So I think 88 watts on its own is just fine, I’d be interested in the discussion of how much one tank of air worth? Lets say the new limit is 88.2 watts and a tank is 11.1 watts, that makes it an interesting point, can I do 1 tank of air and another 11 watt motor or 2 more small motors.
To add to the discussion - I am reminded that game strategy and design only gets you so far - a top team (for middle school) had their best robot unable to score because a past VRC HS Worlds team put them in their place by showing that your opposing alliance only needs to prevent you from scoring no matter how many motors you have - said alums just drove a push bot around to prevent opposing alliance from achieving their objectives…
End of day, build better robots, but have better game strategy that accounts for brute force interference
