[Peter Matteson]

Our team frequently discusses the failure that we had as rookies in 1995 that lead to a judges award called "Best Execution of an Alternative (Losing) Strategy". This was given to us because we created an overly complicated catapult to launch the ball through the uprights that formed the goal, the crowd cheered every time they saw us score and people loved the design. The problem was is was not a fast or effective way to score. The best way to score that year was to quickly swing the ball back and forth through the uprights. We had that idea but got so wrapped around the axel thinking that method was easy to defend that we spent all build making an undefendable scorer that took half the match to reset.

Focusing on the wrong part of the game will get you every time. As Karthik said above you have to know how to play the game before you design so that you know what to build and where to focus your effort.