[GeeTwo]

My impression of the mid-season or CMP rebuilds was that they were not being planned as of stop build day, but arose as a teams recognized that the level and/or style of competition was different than initial expectations, or perhaps the initial design never worked out as well as was hoped.

To plan to build two robots, you would probably want to design your drive base to support both configurations, and limit yourself in the second design to things which can be built from COTS and a few pounds of manufactured parts in a few hours. You would also want to build at least three drive bases: Competition, Driver practice (initial configuration), and development (second configuration, and driver practice). I would also wait until after week 2 to get serious on the build of the CMP configuration, as the game style doesn't even begin to gel until then. Do designs and maybe a prototype, but unless you have the manpower to build and tweak several designs simultaneously, hold off building until you can pick the one with confidence. Of course, you always have the option of not changing to your second design.

As you obviously have lots of people to pull this off, you may also want to have a backup drive team to help tune the second robot, if not to drive it at competition.