[Ian Curtis]

Last year's rulebook doesn't differentiate between teleoperated blocking and autonomous blocking. At the driver's meeting in Atlanta we were told that high speed long distance ramming in autonomous would not be penalized unless it occurred within a starting box, as that was the only way they could objectively judge intent. At our regional (BAE) ramming was not called in autonomous. I'm sure this will be clarified in the Q&A.

To the thread starter, I would suggest going back and looking at some of the discussions on this forum that occured last year regarding autonomous. Essentially, blocking last year in autonomous was a very viable strategy, as there was a wide open field. In Atlanta with the Championship title on the line the alliance led by 25 (one of the most talked about robots), decided to go completely defensive and keep the alliance led by 296 from scoring. Unfortuneatly those pesky CMUcams did their jobs, and 296 and company still scored.

Also, autonomous scoring may be difficult this year, or it may be easy, we simply don't know yet. If it is relatively easy, a high seed will most likely be searching for a more defensive robot for his/her second pick. Reason being the serpentine draft tends to get rid of the most effective scorers before the they get to pick again. So a decent scorer with above averasge defensive abilitilites may be a decent bet at getting picked during the second round. We'll see come March...