Quote:
Originally Posted by Aren Siekmeier
Remember that the likes of 254 and 1114 have always found their way around any such limitations. Those two teams, in 2010 when motor rules were still rather strict, built more sophisticated drive gearboxes with a power takeoff to power their climbing mechanisms, and still achieved very fast drives and climbers with the limits that were imposed. Other teams came up other ingenious ways around the rules to get high performance (gas shocks, etc.). Lower level teams don't have the fabrication capabilities or engineering help to compete with this.
This sort of argument comes up quite a bit. In general, relaxing the rules gives lower level teams more options to do what the high level teams were doing anyway, sometimes at great cost.
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I think we're defining lower level teams differently; a team that is attempting to compete with the top tier but without quite as many financial or machening resources is what I would call a mid-tier team. I concur that relaxing motor rules does allow this level of teams to compete at a higher level than they previously would by giving them the "throw more power at it until it's fast enough" solution.
When I think lower level teams, I think of the 10-12 kid teams who's single mentor is their shop teacher. These team aren't greatly affected by motor rule changes as they generally have a kitbot + 1-2 simple mechanisms.