[Andrew Remmers]

You have to also put into the picture that chain is less efficient than gears over a certain distance since chain has a 70% transfer of the original energy put out, and gears have a 90% rate of transfer of the energy produced. So gears over a certain distance would be more efficient than chain. But the 16-17 inches shouldn't be to big of a deal.

Our team used to run the intake with chain, but then we encountered some problems with it slipping off the sprockets. We redesigned the intake to use gears and even though it was the same ratio the gear drive was faster and now our intake picks balls up ever faster!

I hope this helps

Andrew