8" Pnumatic Wheels @ Andymark soldout

[PowerfulKitty]

First, I may say I am a student, not an engineer or professional whatever. I do not have lots of years of industry experience, but physics was my favorite class.
I actually don't have any dislike for the pneumatic tires, and we considered the pros and cons of them plenty. But I'm not bummed that we can't get them, and that was just the easy way to rule them out for our team.

For the sake it, here:
Ease of use: Solid tires are easier to use for two reasons. Dropped center designs are very straightforward with solid wheels, and I have heard that sometimes you need a greater drop with pneumatic ones. I do not have experience with this, nor does anyone on my team, so we would rather not take a chance at having to fuss around with that. The other reason is managing the air pressure of the wheels. This could be related to reason #1.

Shock absorption: Seems to be the greatest benefit of pneumatic wheels. That said, I don't see how the impact of crossing defenses is going to be any more violent than the full court ramming that robots survived in 2014. Therefore I believe that the electrical and mechanical parts of the robot should handle it just fine.

Traction: We are planning on using 2" wide VexPro traction wheels, which I expect to have comparable traction to the pneumatic ones. I would like to see some proper testing of this if anyone could point me to it.

Summary: It is fair to argue that pneumatic tires could be better. If you have them and are planning on using them, it will probably work out well for you. But if you can't get them, don't worry, I don't think it will leave you with a disadvantage on the field, so it is not worth the time and money to go running around trying to find them.