I have to agree that sending out parts to some companies, and making some less complicated parts (or easy to machine) yourself, would be very beneficial. This will also help them understand how much time/effort you have to put into making a single part (or an assembly).
Being "gentle" about bringing these ideas up is a HUGE factor. It is hard not to offend people sometime's, even if you don't try to. People may think that you didn't like how they ran the team or how they machined parts if you are outsourcing them.
Though i have never built a second robot I believe it is a really good idea. As being a driver i understand how long it takes to get use to the controls of the robot. Usually it takes about 1 competition and lots of nights of thinking you are driving to understand the controls as if it was natural. But if i had a second robot i wouldn't need that 1 competition, i would already know the controls almost perfectly, I might need the practice day to fully get use to the field though.
Regarding your Communication between you and your fellow driver, it needs to be almost perfect. Me and my fellow driver are good friends now, and we know exactly what the other person's next move is, without even talking usually. There are a few times that we had conflict of decisions, but that may be because we developed slightly different strategies. Ex. in last 30 seconds last year i wanted to raise the elevator for top row and put circle on triangle spot, he wanted to put the circle on middle where circle goes. In the end we purposely dropped the tube to go deploy the minibot. Either way nothing would have changed, just another judgement call.
My team is also in the same boat you are. I have tried to push the designing for 2 years now and i think i finally got them to notice how important it is. What i did was design a full chassis, present it to them, and built it, proving that Design is VERY beneficial to the team.
Good luck this year and hope this helps
