[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

Too many motors in the kit? bah. We're using 5 this year.

Darn you beat us. We have 6.

I think the drive train arms race stems from a few factors I haven't seen mentioned yet. Simply every year you have to have a drive train. Therefore when teams do offseason development projects it winds up being the obvious choice because you'll be able to use some portion of the project the next season no matter what.

Another factor that caused the development of these drives in the first place was the weight of the goals in 2001 & 2002 that teams needed to move. That was followed by a completely defensive 2003 game (I blame this squarely on the ramp bonus being too high) where teams had to push to be king of the hill. Teams that were around in those years had to build stout drivetrains and didn't want to give them up once they got used to the speed and power. New teams would see these drivetrains and emulate them getting us to where we are.

Oh and there's the fact robots can weigh about 20 lbs more (bumpers & battery rule changes) now than they did 2004.

My solution for the last couple seasons has been go smaller and lighter to get away from these issues, but every time I've brought it up people seem violently against it because they don't want to give up what they've got. We've grown to expect more in the kit every year without having to give anything back, and that attitude needs to change for anything to happen in this arena.

Pete