[JamesCH95]

I am speaking in generalities, there are shades of gray everywhere in FRC strategy.

Execution is everything. Look at individual robots: would you rather have a robot that's designed to be the best robot ever, but only 50% of its systems work at any given time? Or would you rather have a robot that does half of the game's tasks completely reliably?

I saw the same thing in FSAE during college. There wasn't some secret recipe to making the best/fastest car, year-to-year the winning car/team varied wildly in final product. What the winning teams had in common was great synergy between their various design choices and the cars were built well enough that they didn't fail during a race.

I think the key here is that almost any strategy is a zero-sum strategy; any offensive move takes away from defense in equal measure, and vice-versa. There are obviously some roles/strategies that mix offense and defense together, but none that I can see that would guarantee you completely shut down another alliance while still being able to score. Thus it comes down to which alliance can execute their strategy more effectively. I also think that flexibility should be built into any strategy.

Execute, execute, execute.