Our team has never built ourselves a practice robot. We have neither the time or the resources to devote to such an endeavor as building an entire secondary robot. As much as it would help our programming team in being to continue working on a secondary bot while the primary one has already shipped, we just don't have the ability to do such. The best we do is have the programming team work on a robot from a previous year until the one we're building for the current season is complete enough for them to begin actively working on it.
This ws the first year I can remember where our programming team had more than the last 3 days before it had be shipped to actually program though. They had almost a full week!
When it comes to making a practice field, we usually build what's necessary. This year we had the baskets and a bridge built and just placed them in the gym for practice. We've never built an entire field before as far having all of the pieces, but what we do build are the essential devices for us to practice with. When it comes close to shipping time we also usually combine with 378 - The Circuit Stompers and their portion of the field to test autonomous modes and competition driving.
The idea that we used with The SUITS at FLR where they fed us balls during the Hybrid mode as we shot them was actually first devised at the Kenan Center with 378 a couple of days before shipping. I was quite ecstatic to see the idea come to light, even if it was with another team.