Actually you bring up a good point!
I think @Ackmaniac could try to answer this one, im not sure how busy is he, but me personally, have very limited (almost non at all) experience with vesc, so I wont be able to tell how good these battery / motor limits work (and their relation to each other!)
In short, for longevity purposes, it might be the best to discharge the cells at 1/2 or 2/3 of their maximum rating. At least, this is what I personally came up with from reading a lot of info concerning batteries.
For the type im using, it turns out, if they are discharged at 20A+ constant, they get really really hot (something like close 80degrees celsius (~176F), such a temperature is bad for the cells in the long term and they just may not perform the same in the long run, if they are regularly pushed to such limit and held there…
Anyways, there is a big science behind all of this… and unless ppl are able to measure and monitor each of these parameters at every ride / often etc… then what is usually choosen, is just to choose a more ‘‘conservative’’ approach and dont ‘‘push the limits’’ but take it more safely (like picking up batteries with more ‘‘buffer zone’’ in terms of max discharge instead of discharging cells at their maximum parameters most of the time)
Anyways, if you take a cell with 20A and make a pack with 2 in parallel fo each serial group (10S2P) you might be ok, as the regular usage might be in the 10-20A range, depending on how fast you wanna go, how big wheels you have, how heavy are you and will you have any hills in your road…
Hills are probably the biggest challenge for batteries / motor, I dont have much experience with hills and battery performance personally, but perhaps, @evoheyax can also step in and share his ‘‘story’’ about battery amps and hills..
He does seem to ride quite extreme and I believe he has a 4wd setup now but perhaps he can point out some valuable info related to what you are dealing with here…
Ppl always recommend to take more ‘‘safe approach’’, so in this situation 3P instead of 2P (also depending on cells) might be the ‘‘safer approach’’.
This is because with 3P, you would increase your battery’s discharge rate by 1/3, You can compare this, perhaps, to a regular car or motorcycle… Either you have 40hp available (1P), 80hp (2P) or 120hp (3P)…
If you have to ride at max the motor can output (40hp) it will be a lot harder for the motor, (in 1P config) than if you ran it at 1/3 of its max performance (with 3P), with a 120hp ‘‘reseve - resource’’ total.
I hope you somehow understand the concept about the battery technology and their characteristics/performance from this.
Anyways, some ppl might add to this or tell a different opinion, since this is basically from what I read and also a bit of little experience I have so far, im still learning (also by writing all this info out)…
So there still might be things I have not included or dont know about… though, I researched li-ion batteries for about 2months at least, so I have picked a few things and ideas along the road… 
+ little things I’ve done with electronics before that
Will try to be short in adding a few more things.
Basically, for choosing battery, you could take the max your motor can take, usually this rating is mentioned something (in terms of amps or watts) and then you can calculate what battery config (how many in parallel and what cells) you need, to be able to meet this criteria!
That’s basically how I did it - my motor is able to output about 2500w / 75A (numbers are approx), so I chose a battery which is able to output 80A max.
So far I’ve reached ~50A with half the voltage motor can take. This means, that instead of theoretical 2500w, I achieved more like 1250W, but the motor still had 50A draw.
50A is peak(max) value, it might have been only for a short moment but sometimes to get upto that hill etc I think you might need these ‘‘bursts’’ of power.
There are some commercial boards which batteries are nowhere as big / powerful as some ppl use here in the forum but they still get away with that! It usually just might mean that their max speed or available power wont be as high, as it could be but these boards will still be able to move forward - just not as fast or aggresive as it could be + there’s always a question how hard it might be for the batteries to operate in such conditions…
So I think you should really find out is it possible to limit max current the vesc takes from the battery… this way you could limit it and make it ‘‘safe’’ for the battery… but that also widely depends on what you riding conditions might be…
I still need to test it out how it is to ride with a ‘‘weak’’ battery, in terms of max discharge…
For now, I just now that if the battery i really depleted, it is not possible to go really fast!
This is also something that happens - if you discharge battery at higher rate, its capacity may also might be a lot smaller than ‘‘shown on the label’’… For example, for that same 2500mah battery, if you discharge it at max rate, it might not give you all 2500mah, but only 2300mah or even less. This ‘‘actual capacity’’ is battery type depending, so you would need to check battery’s datasheet to figure out how much each battery outputs (its capacity) at what discharge rate (either 2A, 5A or 10A).
Ok, so that’s probably a lot of stuff to consider… I hope I have given you some more info to think about, since you will probably be riding that board for quite a while… unless you decide to sell it at later point… so yeah, battery choice might be important, as it costs quite a bit (perhaps almost the most expensive part for single drive setup),
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If some info seems off-topic or not so relevant, please say so @Fin420
You can try to check some ‘‘vesc logs’’ or ‘‘vesc monitor app’’ videos and look at Amperes section, it will also depend on gearing ratio, wheels, terrain (wind, road etc) and other things but in general you should be able to see the ‘‘average numbers’’ you might be dealing with.
Try to look up a video where someone has 10S, as 12S might get a bit less amp draw…
Sorry for not giving a direct answer to this… your best bet might be really to research and decide on your own… same as I did… I did choose higher discharge rate at a sacrifice of less capacity…
So im not entirely sure, did I choose longevity over short-term gain (longer distance vs longer battery life) or not… It might be (in some cases) it is better to choose higher capacity, live with less power but longer travel distance and also shorter lifespan of battery (decreased capacity).
Im not sure can you ‘‘damage it’’ right away… It would depend on how you use it… I think if you dont choose a too low specs (low discharge) for your batteries, so that they indeed would need to be at their max all the time, you can not ‘‘permanently’’ damage them that fast.
You would have to look for ‘‘voltage drop’’ though, and you might get less performance out of them - they would ‘‘die’’ a lot faster than they should because they would get a bit ‘‘stressed’’ by pulling a lot of current from them all the time…
Though, it looks like some setups of eboards use only about 5-10A constant, at 10S, this would be about 300-400w of power, probably. So unless you choose 5-10A cells, I think you will be good.
