[MichaelBick]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

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.

I agree with this thought. 6 motors is just so easy now, especially if they keep even half of the motors available. If you have the motors I see little reason in not going 6 motor drive.