[jvriezen]

Just as an anecdotal example, I had first hand experience in a case where an alliance captain (Team A) made a first pick of Team B which had a pretty reliable mechanism to accomplish a key specific game task.

Team A thought their mechanism was superior to Team B's and realized that due to the great similarity in a portion of the mechanism, they could 'transplant' Team A's solution onto Team B's bot, by only drilling a couple holes and attaching a couple very trivial parts. Team B was not asked about this plan prior to picking or after picking. Team A simply arrived at Team B's pit after alliance selections and basically said, "we are going to do this." and proceeded to do the work in Team B's pit.

In the quarter finals the transplanted mechanism failed, twice, the second time with magic smoke, but both matches were still won due to the overall strength of the alliance. Team B decided to revert back to its own solution, and in a later match, Team B's original mechanism outperformed Team A's mechanism.

Team A was a well respected and routinely highly ranked team.

So it is not in all cases that the 3rd bot's team will be consulted or given a chance to accept a suggestion for change.