[Official 2007 Game Design] Autonomy And Other Technology Discussions

[Lil' Lavery]

Keep autonomous big. Keep it REALLY big. This year was good, but it could be MORE. And KEEP robot interaction in auto.
While rookies and some teams may suffer from big auto modes, with auto modes that enable and even promote interaction by having big rewards and close starting positions you can create simpler auto codes that can alter the autonomous portion of the game. A simple "drive straight" code could change whether or not the opponent managed to hit a bunch of shots in the center, or none. It allows for basically a lesser function autonomous to acheive an important goal. You don't even need an advanced manipulator to accomplish it.
Another cool idea would to be follow FVC's example. Many people have talked about having auto portions of the field. FVC had two seperate games, autonomous and operator controlled. Your rankings in both games were averaged to form you overall seed, then you picked your alliance partners and played the operator controlled for the elimination rounds. The auto game also had slightly different rules (the field was divided into 4 sections, one for each team, center goal was worth 2 points, no ownership of goals, and only 30 seconds instead of 2 minutes). I would have liked to see it have the same rules though, with the exception of maybe staying 30 seconds instead of 2 minutes. Interaction and alliance partners would have made interesting strategy discussion, along with deciding which goals to pursue, as you couldn't adjust to the opponent's strategy afterwards. Scouting and pre-game strategy would become incredibly important.