[EricH]

Let's assume that the endgame is autonomous for a second. At 2:00 into the match, the robots all go into autonomous mode. What's going to happen?

First, we'll assume that not every robot is pointed the right way. Scoring for your opponent is never a good idea--it's often difficult to tell which side is which (from the robot's view). (Well, almost never--but let's just assume that those games never happened for a while.)

Second, that first result assumes that every team HAS a working automode. I'd go into what happens when you assume, but that's kind of beyond the point. There are going to be a lot of obstacles on the field--robots that aren't moving, unscored game objects, etc.

Third, robots are going to need to aim. This means targets (on the field) and targeting systems (on the robots), including rangefinders. Guess what tends to not happen every. single. year.? That's right, a lot of dead reckoning and not a lot of advanced targeting systems. Many teams are lucky to get a camera feed working. DUCK!

Given that set of items, I foresee the following if ever the auto portion is moved to the endgame:

• Half of the robots won't even try.
• Of the rest of the robots, maybe another half will have some attempt.
• That set gets safety violations multiple times.
• A FEW elite teams (Poofs, Wildstang, Simbotics, and some of the others of that caliber) develop and use very good automodes.

Of course, I'm assuming here that the GDC doesn't award many points for auto working. There better be LOTS of points on the table if they do try putting automode at the end, enough that teams HAVE to do it to win.