[FTC]: And here we go again!

[Monty Python]

Originally Posted by ProgramLuke

I feel that the autonomous period should be the primary period, however I accept that not all teams would be capable of this. Once the FTC game is announced I welcome anyone to pm me for help with autonomous in NXT-G, RobotC or Labview.

While I agree with you that autonomous is more valuable than tele-op (the combination of programming and engineering coming together) tele-op does require coding as well and successful teams tend to implement lots of coding into tele-op. I would be more in favor of a challenge that rewards teams that utilize more complex code in tele-op. Then, even rookie teams with no programmers should be able to do something instead of just sitting there even if they won't be terribly competitive.

A longer autonomous really presents you with only a couple of options. You can just sit there doing nothing (which makes the game more boring and, therefore, less interesting to spectators), you can design an excellent autonomous that does any number of things and scores a hundred, thousand points, or you can write a ramming code in 5 minutes designed to stop the aforementioned amazing program. Besides, even the amazing autonomouses (autonomi?) rarely need the full 30 seconds.

In my mind, moving robots attempting to do something>rambots or non-moving robots and a longer autonomous, at this stage, would be bad for the game.