Using the Drawbridge/Sallyport or not?

[jblay]

In our design on 694 this year, we decided not to go for the lowbar and instead decided on a bot that could traverse the other defenses well. In the end we ended up with a bot the could do the drawbridge, though not well quite yet and can open the sallyport from the neutral zone for a partner and then sneak in behind them. As we played through our first regional, we were utilizing the drawbridge and sallyport to try to get breaches in matches where we didn't have a bot that could do the lowbar, but we weren't opening the drawbridge from the neutral zone, only coming in from the courtyard. For the sallyport, we were opening it for partners. Once we reached elims, we decided that we would ignore the category all together, because we could get a breach without it and it would slow down our overall scoring, and in all honesty we weren't doing either of those defenses well enough yet.
Here is the situation we find ourselves in and I think there are a few teams and there will be a few alliances going forward as this game evolves that have a similar question. Should we utilize the drawbridge and sallyport or not?
My feeling is that at the highest level of play a breach and the 8 balls for a capture are a given, so at that point it doesn't matter how you score, it's all about how much you can put up on the board, if you are going into the neutral zone for a ball, why not take the extra time to get 5 or 10 points from that category? If it takes you longer to pickup 2 balls and score them high (assuming 100% shooting, which is never the case) than it takes you to clear the drawbridge/sallyport isn't it suddenly worth it again? Should we invest our time in making our robot better at the drawbridge/sallyport? What does the world of ChiefDelphi think?