[Cyberphil]

One thing, balls are fuel, not two separate things.

As for your questions, I definitely agree with you on the amount of balls on the field, for sure.

The thing to keep in mind about the balls is once scored in the boiler they are cycled back onto the field through the loading stations. Theoretically there is no time where you would run out of balls. There may be some times where balls are sparse on the field, but I doubt that will be the majority of time.

As for gears being dropped, ideally nearly every team designing a gear manipulating mechanism would understand the importance of holding tightly onto the gears, but of course that will not happen, so yes, expect some gears to be on the ground. I would assume the most likely place gears will fall is when being placed on the lift.

So yes, expect some gears to be dropped, but keep in mind, there are spare gears in the player station. Is it worth dedicating time and energy to a system that may or may not be used in every match?

Hope this helps!