So with kickoff being (checks watch)… in less than a week, has anyone received their pre orders yet? That is only two business days until kickoff since two days this week are holidays.
My heart truly aches for teams that deployed significant amounts of hard fundraised cash on motors that they hoped to use in their Reefscape bots, and now might be delaying their build season schedules around promises of products arriving “around kickoff”.
We ordered on 10/25 morning but have not received the X44. We did receive the X60’s we pre-ordered though.
We had a choice to buy them or not, don’t lose too much sleep for us!
-Mike
Same here, we chose not to order any. But seeing discussion elsewhere from teams who did order them and are still waiting is causing the sirens in my head to go 
Considering it’s NYE I’m sure WCP folks are spending time with their families or significant others, might want to give them a few days here as pretty much everyone is on some kind of holiday break right now.
You’re right. I’ll wait until after the holidays to discuss the status of nova pre order shipping dates 
How else are you supposed to raise funds for the season?
Just not sure what you expect to hear on December 31st when we’re all with our families here. We’re all working as hard as we can to get these products out the door on our end at least. Thanks though
I’ve had the chance to meet a lot of folks from a lot of the vendors we depend on. Everyone of them has had a strong understanding of FIRST and how things work. They understand that time is the enemy now and will be working diligently towards getting teams the tools that they need.
And while my own team is waiting on parts as well, I’m willing to extend them a little grace. I’m also remembering that improvising and dealing with adversity are very much in the traditions of FIRST.
Separating the vendors as companies from the people who run said companies is a critical skill to evaluating wise financial decisions in this program in my opinion.
Everyone owns his/her criteria on selecting a supplier. (Past performance often being the strongest) my point is that these suppliers KNOW that time is the enemy.
This is always a tricky part of each season. It’s even harder for teams that have to wait until CY 2025 before funds are available to purchase parts…if you think you have it bad they can really tell you about struggles…
But again this is a part of it. Did you have a contingency plan in place? To me this is where PACE is the true foundation of wisdom. (Primary Alternate Contingency Emergency).
Folks are working really hard to get things to you. If they are a little late you’re going to have to adapt.
And yet, I can’t help but notice you’re here 
/s
To play devils advocate a bit, I’ve had to catch myself a wondering about a lack of updates a few times over the past week, but I also work for a company that only lets us take Christmas Day and New Years day off, so I kinda get it. Lord knows you guys will all be plenty busy for the next few months though, so it’s fair tbh.
chief addiction is crazy
i’m down with wcp taking more breaks; their new products keep stretching our budget. if 2025 is anything like 2024, wcp will just have cots ranking points on their site lol
I just want to note that receiving motors near or after kickoff has been the norm since brushless came out in 2019.
2019 Neo - First orders started arriving after Christmas
2020 Falcon 500 - First orders started shipping basically around New Years
2024 Neo Vortex - First orders started shipping around New Years
2024 Kraken x60 - Started shipping around kickoff
I don’t know if anyone’s seasons were ruined or felt their hard, fundraised cash was wasted. But you have 4 years of data to go look at.
“It’s always been this way” has never been a particularly compelling defense of the status quo.
It isn’t, you’re right.
What it IS is a message that “look, you’re all panicky that you’re not going to get your motors this season, but look at the previous years and they’ve shipped ‘late’ those years too, so DON’T PANIC* and start spamming the companies with emails while they’re almost guaranteed to be out of office”.
It’s also–to me at least–an indication that maybe don’t preorder the first season of a new motor, eh?
And it would be nice for this not to happen every single time there’s a new motor, but I’m not sure how best to prevent it, so I’ll shut up and let someone else figure that out.
*in large reassuring words on the cover…
No panic here, just trying to speak up for teams that are not as vocal about the situation they find themselves in now and the struggles that come with unkept promises. The only item my team has pre ordered this year is our game pieces so I have zero skin in this game to cause personal stress.
Just want to make sure vendors are held accountable for the really sad status quo you mentioned.
Do we really find ourselves in a “situation”? I feel like the teams that bought X44s aren’t too vocal about it because there’s nothing so pressing about actually getting them.
I mean, we’re talking about a motor that pretty much only exists for quality of life. I’d be pretty surprised if you could show me a design that absolutely needs an X44 to work as intended-and even more surprised if you need to build that design on kickoff day.