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Re: Value of a Gear Ground Pickup
I believe one of Karthik's rules is to be able to pick up your most important game piece off the floor. If gears are most important to you for scoring points, then a ground pickup is probably a good idea. There are of course exceptions. (See 2013)
Another thing he will stress teams do is to focus on doing a few things very well instead of a lot of things not so well.
Looking at the way 2013 played, I think the value in having a gear pickup will be determined by what ever you do faster. Especially in the scenario where you need to pick one mechanism or the other.(Do one very well vs both not so well.)
Unless you can load as fast or faster from the floor, stick with human load. Floor load has the added bonus of being able to potentially grab gears that have fallen or auto gears. But, if it's slower than your design for human load you are now relying on your opponents(or teammate) to make mistakes/be ineffective for your floor pickup design to have an advantage. If they do not make mistakes in a match you are not performing as good as you potentially could have due to slower cycle time. And if they are dropping gears they are already falling behind.
So I think that yes, the ground pickup does have value due to potential auto/dropped gears. But if it slow's down your game play outside of those variables it's NOT worth it.
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