[Nemo]

People talk a good game about recommending that other teams leave out a core game function.

If you're a team that's good enough to consistently seed as an alliance captain, then sure, it's more convenient for you to draw qualifier round allies and 2nd round picks that are capable of doing one function really well. But those allies aren't necessarily doing themselves any favors (competitively speaking) by capping their abilities at a scoring level that's too low to win a regional except as a lottery winner 2nd round pick. I'm not trying to disparage the value of those 2nd round teams, but I do say that banking on being that team is a low probability proposition. I'd only want to go that route if my team's resources were low enough to rule out any reasonable possibility of building the everything bot and seeding high.

The scoring math is depressing to look at for robots that are missing one of the key elements.

It comes down to team resources. It makes sense for lower resource teams to pick something and stick to it. This isn't a year when I'd advise a middle resource team to skip out on part of the game, and that's due to the nature of the game scoring.