[GreyingJay]

Lots of good advice here.

First thing to do: watch the game animation again (and again and again if you need to) and read the manual over and over. Become intimately familiar with the rules of this game.

What are all the ways you can score points? Brainstorm ALL of them with your team. List every single action separately. For example, "cross a defense" can be broken down into "cross the low bar", "cross the portcullis", etc. Each of them has a different difficulty level and probability of being on the field. Evaluate the difficulty level of each item on your list.

What are all the ways you can deny your opponent from scoring points on you? Brainstorm ALL of them with your team. Evaluate the difficulty level of each item on your list.

Make sure you cross reference the manual to make sure all your ideas are legal. At kickoff my team came up with all kinds of wacky ideas including "squat on your own batter to prevent the other team from capturing" and "squat in the opponent secret passage to get boulders faster". Turns out some of them aren't allowed, but it's always good to be trying to think of loopholes or "outside the box" strategies.

Find 1114 (Karthik's) strategic design video series on YouTube. There are a few versions floating around. Watch them with the whole team. Watching a webcast of one guy talking for an hour doesn't sound exciting but trust me, you want to watch this all the way through.

Build your kit of parts robot exactly as it came in the box. (Don't cut the frame yet if you're not sure what you want to do with it next. Just build the big square frame.) Wire up all the motors, motor controllers, and the RoboRio control system. Learn to write a short program to use the joystick to drive it around.

Get the plans for the team versions of the field elements and build at least a couple of pieces. Build the ramps and the low bar defense at a minimum, because (hint!) this is a very easy one to be able to cross and breach. Build the batter ramp. Consider building a low goal and/or high goal on the tower, because I think you could easily build a robot to work with at least one of those.

If you've done all this, then you should be able to evaluate all the possible strategies (offensive and defensive) and decide which of these things you can try to do. Some of them will require virtually no effort from a "designing the robot" point of view, such as playing defense, crossing the low bar, challenging the tower. Some of them will require a little bit of design effort. How will you modify your basic kit of parts chassis to be field-legal, for example? (Hint: cut the frame down a bit, add some bumpers). Can you figure out how to move a ball around the field?

Don't forget you are part of the greater FRC and FIRST community. You've already found these forums. Ask questions. Check out what other teams are doing on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, etc. It might give you ideas.

Don't try to do more than you are able. Showing up at a competition with an ambitious plan, but a half completed robot, is much, MUCH worse than showing up at a competition with a finished robot that maybe doesn't do that much. (Don't ask me how I know this.)