[Bill_B]

It looks like the commencement of cycles for one alliance is independent of the other. That is, when all the red auto-balls have been scored the red cycles begin even if the blue ones are still bouncing around. Since the assist scores for an alliance cannot commence until cycling, the moral seems to be don't place an auto-ball for your robot, unless you're pretty sure you can score it during auto itself or very soon after. The longer an alliance has to get credits for assist scoring the better.