Quote:
Originally Posted by waialua359
Over the years based on our experiences, I find this very true.
However, when we had our software controlled auto transmission in a previous year, we found that to be highly effective......except we scrapped it when our roll pin from the dog gear went sour in matches. We didnt last an entire tournament without having issues with it.
The first time I saw shifting was 2001 (I think) at the SVR regional when 254 used low gear shifting to balance on the bridge much easier. It was very quick that year. EJ drove......maybe he can comment if it was worth it.
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I'm kinda lolling at the thought of EJ driving a robot in a FRC competition.
I used to share this thought, but have found through experience that the idea that slower top speed=faster isn't necessarily true. My current belief is that you should optimize your acceleration by reducing the mass of the robot as much as possible, and as a last resort, adding more power. Limiting your top speed to improve your acceleration is a risky proposition at best. We geared our robot too low in 2012 (where conventional wisdom would say that you needed acceleration a lot more than speed), and we really found it limited our performance. Sure, we accelerated quick, but it took forever to go anywhere.
This offseason, we played with an approximately 90lb bot (not including bat and bumpers), and geared to go around 18fps with a WCP DS. Simply put, the acceleration and speed were fantastic, even compared to a bot only 30lbs heavier. 18fps adjusted was a good speed for short runs around defense too. We got heavy d played on us all through quals, and we only really started shifting in elims. That robot flew, and it was because it was light and we geared really fast.
My opinion tends to be that for robots with a decent center of gravity, speeds of 16+fps are reasonable for most games (with a shifter). Of course, others have different well supported ideas about the "best" top speed.