Quote:
Originally Posted by Gravity
Although I think two-gear autos are a stretch, I do think we will see at least one team attempt it. Last year people thought two-boulder autos were impossible until a certain point.
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I really don't think anyone serious about it thought two ball autos were impossible. Nothing in the rules prevented them and it was heavily discussed as a viable option.
Multiple game piece autonomous modes, when they are easy and require zero robot coordination, are extremely rare. 2011 and 2014 were the only years they got vaguely common, and the reason for that is simple - you were allowed to leave a preloaded game piece on the floor in an area where you were allowed to freely move in. In 2016 this got more difficult because of the line restrictions and also the defenses, so it got even more rare.
What makes it so unlikely this year, is that you need to not only rely on your partners giving the gears up, but they need to repeatably DROP them for auton to be possible. There are a few vaguely repeatable ways to do this, but combined with the relatively low reward of a two gear autonomous mode (with help, you get... 20 extra points) it's not a task that's going to happen this year.
Teams that are very good at autonomous have a completely different game piece that is dramatically more rewarding to score in autonomous mode than a gear, which is a modest bonus.