Like @MrDibble, you are simply repeating the original claim. Yes, this is modern LEGO, and I think it’s a regression. That’s the whole basis for the discussion.
Modern LEGO Technic sets–with some exceptions–are simplified on the inside mechanically. The Porsche simply has fewer mechanical functions than the car I had. LEGO could have made their sets even more mechanical (and they did for a time), but instead they decided to add a bunch of greebles to the outside to make it prettier.
I’ve no idea; my minifigs all found their way to the bottom of the toy box never to be touched again. For me, LEGOs are for building machines, not playing with dolls.
Pretty sure part of the disconnect here is our relative motivations for playing with them in the first place. There’s a reason why I was attracted to Technic sets early on. But according to @MrDibble, the reason for Technic’s existence isn’t to build sophisticated mechanical devices, but rather to attach more greebles at right angles.
The problem is that if you have 40 beam pieces to work with–because you don’t work for LEGO and don’t have an infinite toy box–would you rather have a collection of just 4-beams, 5-beams, 6-beams, and 8-beams, or would you like to dilute all those with a bunch of right-angle pieces? Basically, you can have 10 pieces each or 5 pieces each.
Even with a small number of piece types, I’d find myself running out of something and have to substitute. But as you get more and more unique pieces, you get less and less of each one. And are more likely to run out of just the type you need.
I can make a right-angle piece with two straight ones. I can’t really do the opposite. Are there times and places where those would come in handy? Sure. But it has a cost.
In my garage, I have two collections of screws. One is a giant jar of miscellaneous screws. It has every type you can imagine! But perhaps only 2-3 of each one. On the other hand, I have a sorted box of them in metric sizes. About 5 sizes and 2 lengths for each one. Can you guess which collection is more useful?
No, you can’t - not with just two straight pieces. Not without an offset. And certainly not keeping its right angle no matter what stresses you put on it.
Is there any limit to this line of reasoning? How about S-pieces? Would you like every possible combo of 3-3-4, 3-3-5, 3-4-3, etc. sized S-pieces? Those would be useful too. But they eat into your parts budget.
From a kid’s perspective, it’s basically a zero-sum game. The pieces cost about 10 cents each. If their birthday gift costs $100, they get about 1000 pieces. They can have 1000 unique pieces with one instance each, or 1000 instances of the same piece (not so bad if it’s a classic 4x2 block!), or some balance between the two. LEGO has been massively leaning towards the former.
That’s what triangles are for. The result will be much stronger than even the molded version. Or, if using studded beams, you can stack a 2x1 and pin it in a way that gives a strong joint. Or really a zillion other things.
And of course once you take the more engineering approach, you’re no longer limited to right angles. I have a box of 90-degree pieces… but what if I need 120 degrees? I can make that with a suitable arrangement of beams, pins, and axles. The right angle pieces are useless.
What on Earth are you going on about? There’s a myriad uses for corner beams (that’s why they’re in hundreds of sets), so your previous uninformed assertion of “rare” utility has already been shown to be wrong. Now you’re doubling down by trying argument-by-ridiculousness instead?
I’m not a kid, why should I give a shit? I can spend all the money on Bricklink my adult heart desires.
Like I said, they still make all the old pieces, and you can buy any piece you want by the box full. So this is a non-argument.
Like I said - without offsets. Show me the triangle you’re making with just two beams, like you said.
Aah, so we’re using pins now. That’s not 2 pieces anymore.
Eh, pins go without saying. If you’re really going to rag on pins, the modern stuff looks even worse. They’re almost entirely held together that way.
You obviously haven’t understood a single word of what I’ve said.
Specialized parts combine several functions, but are useful in fewer situations. This is a matter of degree. A right-angle part is more specialized than a straight beam, and a weird fairing corner is more specialized yet.
The handful of parts that one might use to replace a right-angle piece are more generic than that piece, and can be used for non-right-angles or something else entirely. Whereas the right angle piece is only useful for right angles.
The same philosophy applies to more than just LEGOs. It’s common in engineering. Well-written software is composed of generic modules, individually not too specialized. Bad software combines functions that maybe shouldn’t be combined. Even if one can make an argument for any particular instance, it damages the product as a whole because the subfunctions can no longer be used for other things.
OK, on this one, I’ll definitely disagree with you. If you’re not familiar with modern Technic, then I can see how you wouldn’t recognize the utility of all of the studless pieces. There’s definitely a learning curve, there. But I’ve put in many an hour on Mindstorms, including teaching it and being officially trained and certified to teach it, and let me tell you, the 3x5 L-beam is, in fact, an incredibly useful piece, with all sorts of practical (i.e., engineering, not aesthetics) uses. Is it essential? No, but then, no piece is: I’ve had plenty of experience with kits that were entirely missing something a set of directions called for, and having to build around it. It can be done… but a lack of 3x5 L-beams would be a lot harder to work around than most.
Wow, reasonable disagreement, what are we coming to? And the fact that you teach Mindstorms carries weight.
Still. I deliberately chose a not-too-bad example. Even sticking purely with the studless beams, there’s also this one from the kit:
Can I think of uses for that? Of course. But it’s yet another step along the route of over-specialization. If my double-135 angle 7x?x3 piece doesn’t quite work, I have to head back to the parts pin, which now has one less generic piece that I might have used for something else.
Sorry; I envy those of you who can construct reasonably aesthetic and functional models from random piles of bricks, but I’ve never had that skill. I’ve mostly constructed just the box models ever since I was a kid. Nothing I came up with on my own was even 1/10th as good as the box models.
Another thing, on this point. Technic has always depended on pins for structure. That’s virtually its sole unique quality. Studs are not very strong on their own. Studs are great at lateral loads, not so much tension or torque loads, so in many cases you combine the two for extra strength.
But the newer sets seem to use pins almost like glue. It’s less about tying end ends of beams together and more about sticking together a bunch of adjacent pieces. The 3-long pins are super common too, because long stacks of these things are floppy with the plain 2-pins.
That design choice isn’t inherently wrong but it’s inelegant, IMO. Like real-world devices that are glued together or have way too many screws.
But how else would you get that level of structural strength (while retaining ease of assembly and disassembly)? The best alternative I can think of would be pieces with the pin-ends built in, sort of like extra-long studs (there are in fact a few pieces like this). But that would mean much less versatility: A beam with no pins built in can accept a pin from either side at any of the holes along its length, while still sitting flush against other pieces everywhere else along its length.
I’m not criticizing the use of pins in general–like I said, that’s always been core to Technic. It’s more about that being almost the sole means of connecting pieces together.
With studs, there are more options. For instance, you can attach two beams together at an arbitrary angle perpendicular to the holes, using studded hinges. Put 3 of them together and you have a very strong triangular structure. The loads are mostly lateral to the studs so it doesn’t fall apart easily. Just one example of many.
Again, it’s a matter of degree. By my accounting, 37% of the parts on the Porsche are pins. On the Test Car, it’s 14%. In a way this is obvious since there are so many studless pieces on the Porsche that can only be connected by pins or axles.
I totally see what you’re saying: It seems like having two ways to connect pieces (pegs and studs) would be more versatile than one way (just pins). Like I set, the new peg paradigm has a learning curve to it, and I thought that too, at first. But if you look at that old model you had, most of the beams aren’t using their studs at all, so it’s not actually much of a loss. And the new beams have a square cross section and rounded ends, both of which open up other possibilities (albeit less obvious ones).
For example: Take two old-school studded Technic beams, and stack one on top of the other. You now have two layers of holes. You might want to connect a third beam to both of those two, but you won’t be able to, because the vertical spacing between the beams is wrong. You can sometimes find different layers connected via studs that have the right spacing, because all Lego pieces have dimensions that are integer multiples of a single unit, but it’ll never be just two stud-beams right next to each other, because the need for stud-connectivity makes those beams too tall. But you can do that with the new studless beams.
Or another one: Try to take three beams, and connect them to each other in a K shape, with the two diagonal lines connected to adjacent holes on the vertical line. You can’t do it with square-ended beams, because the ends get in each others’ ways. But you can do it with rounded beams.
I think the disconnect is actually that your stated complaint “most of these pieces can’t be used for anything other than the model they come with”, is totally different from your actual complaint, “I far prefer Technic that concentrates on pure mechanics without any flash extra stuff”. If you’d just said that to start with, I would’ve had no comment. I only disagree with you because you continue to assert that these new pieces have no use, that you’d need 10 sets to be able to make an 11th, and so on. And you double down when shown that your perception that the new pieces are of little value outside the set they come with is wrong.
If you want to say that you think there should be more Technic sets that focus on pure mechanics, I totally agree with you, that’s not what you’ve been saying though.
Some good examples, though they don’t quite argue against the point I was trying to make. I agree, especially with your additional examples, that the studless beams have some good uses. The finer point I was trying to make is how the beams and other components are so often just connected right next to each other, with little long-range support.
For example, say you wanted a flat plate, supported on the edges. You could take a bunch of studless 6-beams and attach them all together with 2-pins. However, you’d end up with a floppy mess because each one is just connected to the next, even if you filled most of the interior with pins. LEGO has a solution for this in the 3-pins, which provide a bit more long-range strength. It’s still a bit floppy but not quite as bad.
Studded beams are one solution to this, but not the only one. If it’s a structural plate and it doesn’t have to be smooth, you could turn the studless beams sideways and build a rectangle held rigid with diagonal members. Fewer pieces, stronger overall, and most of the forces on the pins are lateral. Not a direct substitute, but potentially more elegant.
No sometimes about it. A studded beam, two thin plates (1/3 thickness each), then another beam can be connected vertically with a beam at 2-hole spacing. Very common in “old” Technic (and probably still somewhat common). Often you’d place two 2x1 plates and a 2x1 beam on another just to have a rigid mount. Normally, a stack like that wouldn’t be too strong, but the vertical member puts tension on the stack and holds it together. Very rigid in all directions.
Using studless beams for the vertical member would work well, since it’s just there as a tie. Takes up less room and has the advantages you mentioned, like putting two right next to each other (at an angle, if desired).
Ok, I actually screwed up that last sentence (should have been “in favor of visuals”), but I think it was understandable in context. And that comment itself was a response to Chronos’ response to an earlier one where I mentioned a bunch of mechanical modifications I made to mine, and how that was LEGO’s intent all along for that model. Visuals at the expense of engineering was mostly the point of that comment.
I still maintain that there is a higher fraction of specialized pieces here compared to earlier Technic, almost entirely used for body panels and the like. And I pointed out many times that the Porsche really is mechanically simpler than mine. Not that it matters, because even if it was as complex, being able to see those mechanical bits function is half the fun.
Not when you’re so hung up on parts counts, they shouldn’t.
I’ve understood, I just disagree.
The 90° beam is not a “specialized part”, it’s a bog-standard Technic item and has been for decades.
Are we just ignoring the quantized nature of LEGO connection points entirely, then? There’s a limited number of angles you can easily create with standard connection methods. LEGO has chosen to turn some of the most useful ones into individual pieces.
You must really hate the 53° angle beam. Even though there’s impeccable logic to it.
The 90° beam is only “too specialized” in your head, I think.
And I’m not even going into how the sizes of the Technic gears are related to the hole spaces in the standard parts…
Let’s just leave it at lots of AFOLs disagree with you. My Millennium Falcon wouldn’t work nearly as simply without that kind of construction, and that’s enough justification for it.
I think the general comment that Lego sets are a lot more specific than they used to be is true. But I think that is the market – While there are plenty of kit bashers/MOC makers – how many are there compared to “build the set on the box and display it” folks?
I also had the older technic sets (Farm tractor and Bulldozer) – what was cool as the book even had ideas on how to combine various sets. Wish I got one of the ~$200 mobile cranes. I did get the original Mindstorms (of just before the newer one came out) which does have a LOT of reusable parts.
I think it’s more accurate to say that there is much more of a variety of LEGO sets now, from the specific to the very generic.
I’m going to get tired of pointing this out at some point, but LEGO still has entire themes of generic LEGO, and they are still very popular. So saying “LEGO sets are a lot more specific” is not accurate when they still produce sets like this: https://www.lego.com/en-my/product/lego-large-creative-brick-box-10698
