First off I think TS is an awesome piece of software. I use it for both charts and orders and have no feeling that I need anything else. As a former professional programmer I especially like its robust programming language for writing custom indicators. I would be lost without that.
That said, I think the automated trading feature on TS is more of a selling gimmick than anything else. I've written several workable though unsophisticated trading strategies and they all had roughly the same results: barely profitable with about 2-1 losers to winners and hundreds and hundreds of trades.
The problem with any automated system is translating a trading system into a programming language.
It is very hard, without miles and miles of programming code, to produce anything that even comes remotely close to duplicating what a good trader sees and thinks when sizing up even simple entries and exits.
Automated systems within the reach of the average trader and programmer are simply not going to perform that well. It would take months of programming to produce anything worthwhile, during which time you could have been becoming a better trader, rather than a better programmer.