I can see where your coming from Ian, and in part agree. My thinking is that I agree with you, in that building a good robot, in terms of skills, is pretty much as hard for any weight class.

However, in terms of construction cost, theres no way a lightweight/middleweight would cost anywhere near heavyweight money, as to get a decent amount of shove in a heavy, youre still looking at needing a pair of 1hp motors at the very least. VoA in the middles used 4 big cordless drills back in the day, this is perfectly practical for a lightweight, and a couple of old half hoursepower wheelchairs/granny carts could do the job in a middle.

Another thing that springs to mind is the practicality of moving it around, particularly for a younger team. A heavy takes 2 or 3 blokes to shift around, a middle could be moved without too much bother by a younger team.

However, the killer point for me is arenas, what we need is lots of local heat type events for this new class. So if things can be kept within a pretty basic arena, this can only help.