[remulasce]

If 2nd round pick is all you have a shot at getting, I would suggest focusing on just one aspect of your robot and sell that. Often, especially at early regionals, past the ~6 top tier teams, there are only ~8 more mediocre teams that can do all the game requires. Past those, it gets extremely hard to organize teams into a pick list, since often /none/ of the last 10 teams on your top 24 list can score at an elimination level. In that case, it really helps to provide just one "service"- this year, a simple bridge-pusher or a solid drivetrain would have been huge for a second pick.

It's late now, but if you can spend a summer designing and putting together a solid "team base" you modify slightly and use every year, it will really help no matter what the game is. Even if you do nothing else, you know you can drive, and driving fast (or at all) really catches a scout's eye. 294 has refined the same basic base over a period of 5 years. The only year we haven't used it in that time was 2009, and we don't like to talk about that.