Programmers: I Have A Challenge For You

[sircedric4]

Originally Posted by ideasrule

I don't think anybody here is saying that FIRST should require all matches to be fully autonomous. Some people, like me, think that autonomous mode should be made at least as important to the match as teleop. Right now, you hardly need any autonomous at all; if your robot is mechanically well-built and well-designed, you're going to win the match.

Well Aim High was basically the game you are looking for. I didn't get to Atlanta that year since it was my rookie year as a mentor and I was in way over my head, but a decent autonomous pretty much won the game for you at least at the regional level.

Now maybe at the Nationals the auto mode wasn't such a game winner but I know that the bonus for scoring the most on autonomous was enough to equal the points during the match. I actually liked that game because the autonomous mode wasn't difficult to be worthy of a good chunk of points. I mean we competed well at our regional and all we did was turn on our shooter. It was aimed by hand and good for 3-4 balls which usually won us our matches.

But the thing is, even when autonomous was worth so many points that year, there were still only 2-3 robots that did it at the Houston Regional that year. The balance that FIRST has been trying to figure out since then is how to make auto mode worth enough to pursue, but not enough to leave those without programmers hopelessly behind. They went from auto being useless in Rack and Roll, to their hybrid mode, to last years where you had to at least move or have your team sunk by human players. I think that this year is a good balance.

You have to do some auto unless you want to contest those balls with your opponent in their own home zone, but your robot can also score as well. Now if you want to use that same model and extend the time or put it towards the bonus round then I am all for that. I liked the balance this year in auto consequences, and also that it doesn't leave those that can't score behind too far to catch up.