We were talking about this topic at a robotics meeting today (just a cleanup session) towards the end of the meeting. We all said, since this'll be the 20th anniversary, that all FIRST games will me mashed together. Here were our ideas...
Small tetras can be stacked on top of plastic tubs or shot through goals at the top of the driver station, which will then be given to the human players to shoot into the trailers behind each robot. For the bonus points, robots can hang on a spider rack, and other robots can suspend from already hung robots.
(we like to be creative with things...)
As for the reality, I would love to see a game piece that is not a ball, but balls are easy to use and we have used up all other shapes in previous years. Cylinders may be a possibility, I cant think of any items that would be large enough and sturdy enough for robots to handle. I am imagining baseballs or basketballs. I cant relate to bacon however (I looked up bacon history, saw that Europe was mentioned, looked up popular sports in Europe, and soccer came up, and I doubt its soccer next year, so yea... no luck there
).
My thoughts.