Even though strategy chess match on Einstein was probably some of the most exciting robot matches I have ever witnessed, I still voted no.
We are what I would phrase as a pretty low tech team that keeps the designs simple to complete the task, we try to finish on time, iterate, and never break down.
To me the most important differentiater between the 2nd tier teams and the rest of the pack is a consistent autonomous. Even better is a consistent multi game piece auto.
My first year in FRC as a mentor was logomotion. My oldest son was a freshman, and our team had a very strong mechanical design group, but programming wise, the team was lacking mentor support. Coming to FRC as a FLL coach, I had no clue what teleop was, or auton was. Logomotion auton was to follow a line and hang an uber tube. In FLL we followed lines all the time, this looked pretty easy task for us, as in FLL we only had one sensor, but in FRC they gave us 3!
Long story short, week 1 at Kettering, our first match, we hung an uber tube. I screamed so long, I almost passed out. My son and the rest of the programmers were jumping around going crazy. We won a our first blue banner that day, and my son was completely hooked on robotics. That season was magical, and ended losing to the Cheesy Poofs on Galileo, who would later be world champs.
4 years later, my son is lead programmer, and on the drive team. No robot banners this year. I would have to go back and check, but from memory, our two ball auto missed one ball twice all season. Our one ball hot detect had significantly more failures, but this was mainly due to losing a second to wait for field to indicate hot and drive in high gear, which jostled the ball around.
It may be boring to watch a bot meander down a line, and hang an ubertube, every single time, but if you are programming that auto, it is the most exciting thing in the world. This year, it was also really inspiring come out of your first district with the third best auto ranking in the world week 4.
Coming from FLL where you have 2:30 Auto, to FRC where you may get 15 seconds, or 10 seconds (or an unpublished 7.5 seconds week 1, and 9 seconds week 4) I say let us have our auto. That is where there is some real programming challenges are, and if not us 2nd tier teams might as well drop the default code on the bot, and start training drivers to improve.
That being said, I have watch the Einstein matches multiple times already, and I still watch the Cheesy Poofs "hybrid mode" montage on youtube a few times a year, so at least we got that.
