Maybe I am missing something here, and if so, feel free to flame me.
But, by my understanding of the rules, the most point an alliance can score during the autonomous mode is 8, derived from three keepers in a row. While these may serve as a base to build more points, during the 15 second autonomous period that is the highest number of points possible.
Base on this, how much engineering, design, and build time should a team spend on this part of building the robot?
Considering that 15-30 points are possible during the “home section” phase at the end of the match, it would make more sense to spend more time attempting to perfect this portion of the match.
Nailing 3 in a row during autonymous would be benifitial only to those who’s main stratagy involvs setting up a huge combo. Considering that there maybe alot of robots who aren’t even concerned about putting rings on the rack, 8 points may not even be worth the efort this year. There isn’t an autonymous bonus this year (which is quite odd), so there is little motivation in capturing 3 arms.
There is a bonus. YOU CANT MOVE THE KEEPER. so it’s a spoiler which give you 2 points. the main benefit is that it halves the opponents top score for each level. (possible score that is)
Probably there’s no bonus because it’s hard to define who wins autonomous. Maybe one alliance would put keepers up with spaces in between so that they have more space to work off of. Less points than a team that gets three in a row, but possibly more effective. Also a team which scores three vertically gets the same points as three horizontally. Which wins? (probably a tie really). Three vertically prevents from eight in a row by the other alliance, but doesn’t leave room to expand. Another reason I think is that there are so few possible scores that ties would occur very often.
It is true that the maximum possible number of points to be scored in automode is 8, yes. However, those innertubes are called “keepers” because they cannot be spoiled by a spoiler. Those tubes are points that cannot be removed from your alliance by your opponents (they will be nullified if covered by another one of your tubes).