Are the mandatory bumpers helping or hurting?

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by CraigHickman

Absolutely, I agree that this makes it easier. Oh wait, that would mean that refs would be calling more out of contact zone penalties, from arm to arm hits, and so on. But they haven't. Sure, it's a nice idea to think that it would make it easier, and conceptually, it does. However, I have yet to see enough out-of contact zone penalties for this to really make sense to me...

Interesting, I've seen a number of these, especially in 2007. I've seen a handful get missed, but that's the case with any rule (let's not get into the ref debate here as well).

Originally Posted by CraigHickman

Hm. See, I've always seen two classes of bots that didn't have bumpers: We've got the ones who are broken and wished they used bumpers, or wished that their frame was more robust, and then you have the teams that designed a strong frame, and don't need bumpers either way. I've always made sure to design my frames to be strong enough to not need bumpers. The only year I had a chassis break was after the bot tipped, and was rammed repeatedly by another bot with no bumpers. Basically, I'm trying to say that not having bumpers teaches teams to design a stronger chassis, or reap the consequences.

The wonderful thing about mandating bumpers is that these strong framed bots won't snap the weaker framed bots in half. I've seen extrusion, box channel, c-channel, kitbot, and virtually every frame type suffer damage at one point. I've also seen various robot components (mainly manipulators) "impale" frames and drive components not shielded by bumpers.

Originally Posted by CraigHickman

I totally agree. Bumpers are nice and all, for some designs, but should not be required in any way. Honestly, you're taking a lot of really stylish designs, and covering them up. What ever happened to the "wow!" factor of a nicely crafted drive base? Now it seems all we have is box-bots that look the same, with the only difference being the color of the fabric on the bumpers.

Really? I think someone forgot to tell 1986, 179, 1098, and 148.

Originally Posted by Nawaid Ladak

your forgetting that there are MANY people who do not bother looking at chiefdelphi... from what i know, it's because of what katy has stated in her other thread that she published last week.http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=65668

taht count is sort of crippled, i know teams that don't even have accounts, or if they do, the next to NEVER check them or log on to CD.

I think if you were to do a poll in the pits at championship you would get more even numbers...

If you are willing to put together a poll at Championship, I'd be very eager to see the results. If anything, given the high-profile teams on CD, I'd think that the teams not on it would actually fall more into the category of teams that use bumpers to protect their often lower-budget frames.