[Yan Wang]

Autonomous is important for the reason that so many people think it's not. They don't fully develop their autonomous mode and aren't able to fully take advantage of it. If 254 and 33 weren't able to get both 10pt balls in auton, would they get nearly as many points? And in most matches, if a goal is pushed into a corral, it never gets removed. Autonomous is a great time to do that, when most robots are ill-adapted for any defensive action. And if you watch Thunderchickens' robot, it grabs the mobile goal (FAST) in auton, pulls it back to the ball drop, and decaps it.

In most regionals, I think capping ties autonomous for least exploited aspect of the game. Both are extremely useful. Using the teams from the example above, 254 relies on herding balls early and getting a hefty amount of points by capping. Team 33 gets the ball early (they could pick up at 5-15 balls in that 30 seconds gained from early ball release) and then relies on herding a ton (70-100+ points worth). Auton is 15 seconds of the game. That's more than 10% of a match. There's so much that goes on that could change a game if a robot is built for it.