Our shooter and climb mechanism were both modular.
For our first regional (Palmetto), we bagged the robot with a version 1 climber and a working shooter. We brought a modified ascent mechanism to the competition and swapped it out (6 bolts). The ascent mechanism worked perfectly, but our shooter had a tendency to jam.
For our second regional competition (DC), we performed a high-risk shooter swap in the pit. We had fabricated a wiring harness on our practice bot, but not on the competition bot. This was a risk because we had to remove the working wiring harness and place a new harness in the chassis. Unfortunately, or modification of the shooter did not solve our root cause: servo motors acting as a gate for a gravity disc feed. We were not actively controlling the discs (bad idea).
At the Championship event, we again swapped our shooter for a full-on iteration of the feeding mechanism. It worked! We finally fixed our jamming issues and we performed nearly flawless (aside from some operator error and a rough impact with an opposing alliance).
The takeaway from this is to know what devices you may want to iterate and build a design that accommodates it. Incorporate a method for simple removal, use harness connectors on your wiring to the digital sidecar for each module, and use a standard, pre-determined/machined bolt pattern.
Oh, and use Anderson Power Poles. You can thank me now
