[Jon Stratis]

I think EricH has it right... you don't want to accidentally get a red card! Also, given the nature of protection for minibot and deployment, I'm going to guess that most team's deployment mechanism and minibot won't be built to take a beating - hitting them while deploying will likely break something.

Along those same lines, at our last regional last year, someone accidentally hit us while we were lifting ourselves at the end of the match. Yeah, they got penalized appropriately for it... but due to the sudden unexpected impact, and the resulting unbalanced twist, one of the poles we used to get our hook to the top came under much more stress than it was designed for, and broke. We had enough time (and resources on hand) to cut and put on a replacement, but that was the only time we broke one of those poles the entire season.

Build everything to meet the limitations of the stresses that can be imposed on it given the constraints of the game. Over-engineering means added weight, complexity, and problems that you don't need.