[tckma]

Originally Posted by EricH

Definitely insane. Yes, it is a bit complex, but here's another solution to green: It's a kitbot, built by FIRST, that is programmed to run interference. It would be in every round, including the finals. Of course, this means that FIRST will have to have a large supply of batteries and chargers at each event, but still, no game has yet had a powered "field element". (Hey, for bonus points, score on top of the green robot! )

A good idea to have a defensive kitbot -- it certainly would eliminate a lot of the scoring confusions, and would be just plain cool! But then, no team is encouraged to write autonomous code at all. I'd originally planned to have two autonomous robots (because the score doubling and final alliance pairings get a bit confusing) -- but for that I'd have needed a six-pointed star, and that would be offensive (desecration of a religious symbol). I wanted also to get away from the rectangular field, since I'm getting kind of bored with it. Any other shape of field that was used, was before my time with FIRST. Considering that this year's high school seniors were freshmen when I started with FIRST, it's time for a change.

My reasoning for making autonomous/regular modes simultaneous was that I think 15 seconds isn't really enough time to do things. (I saw one team alllllllmoooooossssst cap with the vision tetra during autonomous mode ONCE.) Also, with that, you don't have to make any special "autonomous only" tasks (like the magnetic hanging tetra).