Picking up balls or not

[s_forbes]

One more thing to keep in mind, in 2006 the human players had a constant stream of balls at their disposal; any ball that was scored by the opposing alliiance was in the hands of the human players.

This year it's different. Each human player starts with 20 balls (or 13, depending on whether or not you want your robot to start with any. If you plan on putting balls in your robot anyway, then you will probably pre-load and start with 13). Considering how easy the shots will be right after autonomous starts, some of that ammo will likely be used up to score. If your at one of the outposts, this leaves you very few balls to last you the rest of the game.

If you are at on of the refueling stations, your stash of balls can be increased only if robots herd balls into the corner. If you need to be able to herd balls into a corner in order to get balls loaded into your machine, then why not just pick up off the floor?