[SBramscher]

The general idea I came to (not necessarily my team) is that gears are going to be similar to defenses from last year. They are going to be simple to score and the amount of effort put into your system is not going to dramatically increase its effectiveness. Last year, most teams who put even slightly below average amount of thought in their drive trains were able to cross most defenses, with the low bar being a strategic exception. I think it is safe to say that since the RI3D can make a decent gear mechanism that we will see it on most bots this year.
What I am getting at is that I do not believe the gears will be the deciding factor in any game where all the robots function normally, obviously in qualification matches where anything can happen alliance wise then gears may be much more important, but during eliminations and final matches the fuel is going to decide it. The number of fuel scored is going to make the difference in those close matches. With this in mind we can expect that fuel scoring capability is likely to be the deciding factor in endgame alliance selection as well.

Just my thoughts.

Also I want to point out, fuel scoring is a finite source of point, because the hoppers process 4-5 fuel per second then that times the number of seconds in a game is the max fuel that can be scored. Unfortunately everything possible falls way under that number.