So this year the autonomous vs tele-op point differences were very clearly set values irregardless of potential difficulty. So what I’m wondering is, at least at the highest potential level of play (talking perfect scores level) what basic strategies should players employ. My first thought is although ultimately cones are the more valuable object to control (2x more cones needed than cubes) autonomous programs that can fill out all mandatory cube locations could easily be one of the best strategies as the cube is much more consistent seeming in it’s holding positions. Also the potential to “throw” them is easier (see 2018) so you could be further away. My team did a rough mock up of a 4 item, 3 field 1 in robot to start, auto and it seems near impossible if not entirely impossible. So high levels of play would require each bot to do a significant amount of heavy lifting, plus you’d likely want to end closer to the human feeder station to get your next pieces.
My ultimate conclusion on the best auto strategies would be to have two sets of 2 piece autos, with one staying on the pad, while the final bot strives for a 3 piece auto. And I honestly think at the highest level of play it will be almost entirely cubes being used for auto, and to fill the bottom slots, as cubes are likely easier to manipulate. I think a lot of teams would rather get all the placed pieces in auto rather than focus on high scoring autos, as you can make up that score in tele-op (again at high level of competition) and you don’t lose any potential points. So my theory is the entire placed pieces are all cubes, along with stored cargo, and they get shot into the 6 higher cube slots, and one gets set down, while one robot balances on the platform and then tele-op starts.