[MrJohnston]

The way I see it, winning alliances will need to have both shooting and defense breaking abilities... It is also possible that a bot that specializes in gathering balls and delivering them to allies in the courtyard will have a place.

In other words, your team can be successful with either primary focus (shooting v. damaging defenses). As others have suggested already, stronger teams will have secondary and tertiary purposes so that their bots can better adapt to different alliance team members and ever-improving understanding of the game play.

So, your team has not made a "poor"choice by any stretch - nor is there anything wrong with your suggested strategic approach. Instead, this is something that our (really large) team often struggles with: How do you make a decision (despite the fact that it will not be unanimous) and still move forward? There are two keys, I believe: 1) Before starting any discussions, there needs to be an agreed-upon process in place for making a decision. Many different models will work for this, but the key thing is to have something in place that ensures that a decision will be made. and 2) Everybody on the team must be ready to abide by and support the decision, whatever it is.

So, I would suggest, that if your team followed a set process - but you disagree with the final decision - that you recognize that the team is going in a different direction and your place is to support the decision to make it as successful as possible. It could be that you recognize needs for the game that go beyond your team's current thinking. If this is the case, looking for ways, in the design process, to suggest your ideas as additional functions - but never in such a way that it would undermine the direction that the team is going.