[Andy Grady]

Now, once again I can't really pass judgment on the whole autonomous period deal until after I see the competition, because after all, I hated the idea of alliances when they first introduced them...now I can't imagine FIRST without them. Also I understand that it does add a nice twist to the game and a pretty cool thing for programmers and so forth, however, I believe that this is going to make the game rougher on many teams...at least until we hit the national competition. How many times have you seen teams still trying to build a robot at the competition (practice day)? As you know, each robot behaves differently from another, so each robot needs to be tested for its autonomous programming, or they will be flying blindly. I can see many teams who were behind all the way to the end of the year, go into round 1 and totally flop because they have had absolutely no time to test and debug their autonomous programs on the actual working machine for this year.

From a strategic standpoint, autonomous mode does add an interesting facet that we have to focus on, however, at the same time it highly limits a teams ability to adjust to the competition. There have been many occasions in the past where a very important strategy was thought of after watching many matches and used during late rounds. Each regional is different from one another. More physical regionals in the east tend to have a whole different look and strategy than the more offensive regionals in the mid-west, or the more passive regionals in the west. By limiting teams to the number of autonomous programs that they have created and tested, this takes away from adjusting to competition style.

Like I said before...the most important move in strategy is the opening move. Now, we are limited on the number of things that we can do in that move.

I will agree with this though...this game should be alot of fun to watch and compete in, autonomous mode included.

Good Luck All,
Andy Grady