[Taylor]

There are a lot of factors in play here.
I'm going to define "front" as the leading edge of the robot as it traverses toward your opponent's tower.

For scoring purposes, it would make sense to put it in front IF your pickup mechanism and your scoring mechanism are the same.

For retrieving the boulder from the midline, it would make sense to put it in back - that way you wouldn't have to turn around to go back through the Outer Works.

For traversing the Defenses, that depends on if your boulder manipulator device can also manipulate the defenses that need manipulating while holding a boulder. If so, put it in front; if not, put it in the back for protection purposes.

Another consideration: if the boulder intake is in front, that would theoretically make it more liable to be struck by opposing robots, so make it robust to survive strikes from many different directions.

Do some prototyping on different systems, see how they could fit together, and based on your findings, you may find your robot designs itself.