[David.Cook]

Here is what I can tell you from the NASA/VCU regionals.

We were lucky to have a fairly repeatable dead-reckoning auton mode. We hit the ramp pretty consistently in about 5-6 seconds, although, I must admit that due to the nature of competition I never thought to time it - we had more pressing concerns. Many teams had similar time. Maybe 3-5 were faster that we, and then there was 234 with that incredible arm. (great job 234!!)
[we actually had one match where we hit the stack about a half second after 234 hit the stack with there arm from diagonally across the field - they got more bins than we did from that start]

There are also about 20% of the teams with very slow auton mode, but many were still effective.

If I had to sum up, it was only in the elimination rounds where you really started to see more than two robots hit the stack early in auton mode. Also, it is my opinion (quite the opposite from my original thoughts 6 weeks ago) that getting all the bins early does not correlate with winning the match. There are a multitude of small bots that can push bins around, and many were flying out of the field just due to impact.

We had incredible luck, a great driver, a very tough bot and two remarkable alliance partners (Props to 388 from W. VA and 395 from the Bronx!!!!!!) and we won the finals.

All I can say is strap in tight, it is an incredible game!