[Adam Freeman]

It was not just Thunderchickens and Wildstang that used auton to their advantage.

HOT and Truck Town also would prefer to load up our robots in auton. Even 971 was attempting to get to the human player station to get additional balls.

The placement of the robots on the field at the start was not by accident. Our alliance knew that 217 and 68 would be very dangerous if they both started with 20 balls, then trapped 971 in the middle of the field for a 40 ball dump into their trailer (ala the Einstien SF2).

Although both 67 and 111 would prefer to load in auton, I was confident that we could get balls off the floor quickly and disrupt 68 and 217 if we both attempted to block them from loading. Worst case in my mind was that we all loaded in auton, then it would come down to who could pin and dump better.

In F1 67 stopped 68, but 217 avoided 111 and both loaded in auton. In F2 67 kinda stopped 68 and loaded, while both 217 and 111 loaded.

We had many auton modes (12) that could be run anytime, but we never had to use them b/c very few teams tried to stop us from loading +6 balls into our robot before the clock started.

I think it gave us a strategic advatage and pushed our scoring average from ~17 balls/match to +23 balls/match.

I was surprised by how many teams only tried to avoid getting scored on in auton, even at the championships.