Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Hachiban VIII
Don't be jealous of teams with more motors in their drive trains.
My team built a six motor drive train this year and it wasn't nearly as impressive as I expected.
For one thing, even in full power we were unable to push most robots sideways. We could only push other teams in head-to-head pushing contests, which didn't occur very often.
With six motors constantly running we also burnt up a great deal of juice. We were often barely able to climb the ramp at the end of our matches (six motors isn't very helpful when you barely have any power).
To make matters worse, we often sucked up so much power that the circuit breaker would be tripped and we would die all together (this happened twice).
|
Actually a lot more went into that problem, the first breaker tripped because it was just old and has been tripped many times in the past. The new one tripped from the crazy current draw, which, if the drivetrain was running properly, wouldn't happen too often. I have a more than good feeling that we actually killed-over a CIM or two which is causing a whole lot of unecessary resistance. To top it off, the gearing was set with the intention of driver control (7fps, 16fps) rather than sheer chain breaking power.
Sorry for the off topic... But anyways, the amount of power your drivetrain needs revolves around your strategy, or the other way around. With 6 motors (when they did work) I just brute forced my way through other robots, easy enough.
Having two motors doesn't mean you can't play defense, it
may mean you can't go around shoving other robots, at least those with more traction and power than your robot's drivetrain. You still can play defense, you just have to be more clever about it. You can easily prevent 1pt shooters from scoring by just camping in front of the goals, you can try pushing robots sideways, you can throw 3pt shooters off course by hitting the corner of their robot.
Hope this helps.