Re: Winning Robot or Quality Robot?
 

I read the question as though a winning robot means that it doesn't need to really do anything particularly well, as long as it got the gold. With this in mind, the choice was simple.

Quality, hands down. A winning robot does not mean a good robot, and especially with this year's alliance selections, some lower-quality robots will end up in the winner's circle.

I see two scenarios:

In the first, you have the scrappy robot that got picked by the 1 and 2 seed alliance, and though you scored 5 points throughout eliminations your partners carried you through easily. This team's robot will be seen as the one that got a lucky break and snuck by on someone else's win. If this happened to my team and I overheard a comment such as this, I would be crushed.

The second scenario is the high-quality robot that happens to lose. Maybe an alliance partner broke, there was an unlucky call, or a driver did the wrong thing. As a quality robot you probably reached eliminations, and perhaps you were the captain of your alliance. Everyone sees you lose and thinks of you as a great robot that almost made it, and certainly a team to keep in mind for the future. People compliment you on your design and you see that although you didn't make it all the way, you had a killer robot. FIRST has always tried to teach us that winning is not the ultimate goal; what you take away from a competition should be more than just a trophy (even if you didn't get one!).

Of course a high-quality robot that rocks the competition would be great too, but, given the choices, I would not sacrifice quality for gold.