[theycallhimtom]

I think the problem this year is that whoever thought of the keeper did not think through the real bonus of using it. In a row of 7 if a single keeper is in the middle the other team has to spoil right next to it.

RRRRSRR which is worth 20 points.

Without the keeper it is:
RRRXRRR which is worth 16 points.

So essentially a keeper saves you four points during the few times that spoilers actually come out.

On a totally different note I think that FIRST should make the camera a little easier to use. Just getting the camera to track the light consistently at a regional is tough. In week 4 they had someone with light values at our regional, but he had no idea how to use them with our code (We use Kevin Watson's code base) so we had to get our own values with an IFI program we hacked. FIRST should make one standard way of using the camera in EASYC and in regular C and then give camera values specifically for that and give much more support for using the camera.

A longer autonomous mode will just punish teams without good programmers. Making autonomous a larger portion of the game just hurts teams at high schools without programming classes. I am lucky to be at a high school with programming classes so we have plenty of programmers with experience, but not many other high schools have that. In my mind autonomous mode should be short (10-15 seconds) and be helpful in the game, but not dominant.