FRC Blog - 2016 Motor Controllers

[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.