VEx Build Season

[irishninja]

So my FRC team is starting some VEX teams at my school. I just had a few questions about VEX.

1) When is the build season and how long is it?
2) When is the kickoff (usually)?
3) How does shipping work?
4) How generally do the games work? Like this year, was it teams of 2 or 3, were they working together etc?
5) How complicated do these robots get?
6) Is there a WFA, Chairmans, Website, Spirit, other award name, Award?

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by irishninja

So my FRC team is starting some VEX teams at my school. I just had a few questions about VEX.

1) When is the build season and how long is it?
2) When is the kickoff (usually)?
3) How does shipping work?
4) How generally do the games work? Like this year, was it teams of 2 or 3, were they working together etc?
5) How complicated do these robots get?
6) Is there a WFA, Chairmans, Website, Spirit, other award name, Award?

Build season is from Kickoff (which was back around October) until your event. There's no shipping--you just bring the robot to the event. The game this year is explained at http://www.usfirst.org/vex/resources/, but the gist was 2v2, two-minute rounds, as well as an autonomous component. The robots range from the very simple (look on CD-Media for FVC171 or FVC4 for a great example) to the rather complex (use your imagination).

There's six awards in FVC:
Think: Deals with the engineering notebook and the "journey" (quote from the manual) that it chronicles
Create: Celebrates creative robot design.
Amaze: Judge's award.
Connect: Goes to the team that scored the most points in autonomous at the end of the qualification rounds.
Winning Alliance: Self-explanatory
FIRST Vex Challenge Award: On par with Chairman's.

Of course, this could all change for next season, so check the manual when they release that.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by irishninja

So my FRC team is starting some VEX teams at my school. I just had a few questions about VEX.

1) When is the build season and how long is it?
The Vex build season starts at the kickoff date (see below) and runs until your first competition. There is no "ship date" as in FRC.

2) When is the kickoff (usually)?
Early-mid October.

3) How does shipping work?
See question one.

4) How generally do the games work? Like this year, was it teams of 2 or 3, were they working together etc?
Two on two alliances (2v2), just like FRC in 2003 or 2004.

5) How complicated do these robots get?
That is a very hard question to answer. Define complicated.

6) Is there a WFA, Chairmans, Website, Spirit, other award name, Award?
http://www2.usfirst.org/vex/2005-06/...g_Criteria.pdf

I would strongly urge your team to start a Vex team(s). It is unfortunate, but there is a large portion of the FRC community that has yet to see many of the possible uses of Vex in FRC, in addition to the FVC competition.

[KathieK]

Please keep in mind that the FIRST Vex Challenge program is a pilot program for this season and everything about the program could change as we move forward.