[Francis-134]

I've found that autonomous is extremely important. All that an alliance has to do is to score some balls in the center or the side during autonomous, get the bonus and turn the rest of the match into a brawl. With that said, I think that this will change as time goes on. Later in the year, more teams will have working auto modes and the margin of victory will be much smaller leading to some competitive matches during operator control.

Along with that, it seems that any good shooting robot will not get its chance to prove what its got. I have seen a number of excellent shooters fire off three or four balls into the goal, then get pounded to pieces.

Finally, I have to say that FIRST really did good with the autonomous. Instead of it simply being a bonus that didn't have much impact on the game, they have made it something very meaningful. Teams are creating some awesome autonomous modes, and some are even modifying their programs depending on who they are facing. When auto mode started in 2003, I never would have thought that there would be_defensive_programs designed to only mess up other teams. This will certainly be an interesting game to watch as it develops over the season and the off season.