Captain of the World Champion Alliance this year was 178 SD30 robotics. There robot was simple, really simple with a speedy effective drivetrain and a single pivot arm with a servo attached bucket (to tilt) with a lego motor at the end to dispense.
That's the only robot at world's I can think of that's simple though.
I think in the beginning of the season, most teams explore their options a bit since they have more time. And it really depends on how the game evolves into. From last year's experience my team's direction was to be fast and score as much baton as possible. But as it turns out, autonomous, scoring pre-loads and balancing with goals can win you a state championship practically anywhere...
Related to that, when most teams try the KISS philosophy, they think about what's the simplest thing to do but also award big points. In GOI! is scoring pre-load (30 points), crossing over / balancing in autonomous (10 / 15), and balancing with / without goals (10 / 20).
If a single robot can successfully do that, then they will score 50 - 65 by themselves and I'm confident that score is higher than at scores at World's. Just by ONE robot.
If an alliance is consist of two robots like that, they can score 90 points easily. And that's in the 95% to 98% tile of the scores at World's. There's less than a handful scores that's higher than that.
And scenarios above are without dispensing batons in autonomous / scoring batons other than the pre-loads.
GOI!'s scoring objectives are highly "non-linear"... What that means is after the simple things that can earn you big points, there's this huge gap to the next objectives that will make your robot better. Those objectives takes more time than the beginning ones (because they're not as simple) and most teams usually ran out of time.
I personally am very disappointed in the scores at World's... Last years game was nail-biting because both sides have to score till the end...
Some robots like my team's (3237) and Say Watt's robot were build to score a lot and as it turned out that was not necessary and it's difficult to score a lot because of the challenge itself.
For rookie teams, KISS should be emphasized. A rookie team can do extremely well in GOI! with the KISS principle (One school had 2 rookie teams and they were picked by the 1st seed in Oregon State Championship). All they did was scored the pre-load consistently and went over to the other side.
The TETRIX parts are just so big... and there's no variety... That kind of play a factor in this matter I think. All they have for construction is channels... As for VEX there are C channels, angles, chassis rails, of different sizes... But I do love the power of the TETRIX motors though... Way too easy to burn one out / break the gears inside but they are powerful.
Some of my teams' / clubs rules of thumb:
Figure out what to do before how to do it (Originally from JVN)
Something that never went wrong before is going to go wrong at a competition (tested MULTIPLE times, and no, there's no way you can avoid it. The best you can do is be prepared and ready)
Break everything that's breakable in the robot before the competition / in practice so you can fix them so they won't break during the competition
Cutting and bending parts are a luxury for the week before competition... not throughout the whole season
ROBUST!!! FTC is interactive and everything needs to be robust... (not having a servo actuated arm sticking out 10 inches of the robot for people to hit)
And many others... I should probably start another thread for tips / stuff like that before I keep rambling on... I feel like most of the things I said should be in the FTC book that's published by Pope John. Never read the book though.
Anyone want to buy a copy for me?