Ugghh... Pneumatics.. My second least favorite system on the robot next to Electronics.
Anyways, personal opinions aside, let's look at this from another standpoint.
If you were designing a game for HS kids to play/compete in, and you also got to choose the parts they use... then.. would you:
A) Let them (the HS kids) have free range and give them anything they wanted to use which would defeat the purpose of learning how things work and teach them only how to assemble parts together to work.
or
B) Would you restrict the supplies to the most basic of fields, (Pneumatic -tanks, regulators, hoses, compressors, etc...) (Electrical - chips, wires, switches, etc..) (Mechanical - Metals, Plastics, Woods
, etc...) Then the HS kids would have to make their own system (
ie: robot) to whatever possible combinatoin of the basic parts they have available.
I personally would choose B. It's not what you can do sometimes, it's how you can accomplish it that seperates the thinkers from the assemblers.
Granted, I would love to use a ready built component rather than make one myself, but in a competition based on learning and inspiration.. Isn't that defeating the point??