[BrendanB]

I think a better question is how much did it help/did you build a practice bot and NOT win a regional.

My old team started building a practice robot in 2009. That year it allowed us a very iterative design process all season. Between our regional and the championship we made some modifications to our shooter, added traction control, and a few other modifications. We were quarter finalists at our regional and won the chairmans award. While we didn't win we learned a lot and were able to fine tune our robot over the month of time we had. In 2010 we went into a larger iterative process that started as full prototype robots and ending with one that we could theoretically ship and compete with, then making a clone we would ship if finished on time. This worked great, over our two regionals and championship we made many changes to our kicker and ball collection in between events and a lot of driver training was accomplished. That season we won our first event (GSR), were finalists at our second regional (NCR), and were quarter finalists on our division (Archimedes).

If a team intends to build a practice robot, you need to be extremely focused an organized. Some times you can start making a duplicate set of parts, and other times things need to be changed so communication is extremely important. There are rewards to gain from a practice robot, but it doesn't mean you will win your event. There are many robots each season that win regionals and even the championship and they don't build a practice robot!