[meaubry]

Ogre, True - but it wasn't until few weeks later that the answer to my question finally defined the part about the robot base. I asked the question because of the words "robot base AND/OR drive train".
Drive train was clear and understandable, but robot base was NOT. Base when we start? Base when we fall over? What part of the base? What is a robot base? And, "blatently obvious will draw far less attention", left me to wonder if that meant the ref's wouldn't be so quick to throw a flag in marginal conditions.
By then, we had already committed to a design with wheels spread 26" apart, and a secondary drive which rotates out in front of the 28" x 38" base, pivoting about our primary drive system axle. Once the match starts we intended on rotating the front bumper/secondary drive and play the match that way.
So, now we will change our strategy a little, and drive with the bumper up so the ref's can clearly see that the load bearing parts that we have on our 28" x 38" base are indeed touching before we collect a tetra.
We have practiced alot and I can tell you that we approach the loading zone quickly, grab the tetra and go, very very quickly. If the ref is watching the wheels for a load bearing violation they may miss us picking the tetra and if they are watching the tetra for a touching violation they will miss seeing our wheels. All in all, I really don't want to have to tell the students to go really really slow so the refs can see that we are blatently obviously bearing a load on the hdpe triangle - time is really important in order to put up a lot of tetras.
But, as Jason said earlier, We will adapt in order to not burden our alliance partners with unwanted and unnecessary penalties.