[Joel J]

The end effector is more important than the arm its attached to (for the most part).

High quality teams?

- They have a good grasp of their resources.
- They are capable of simplifying effective designs, while not losing any functionality.
- They have skilled drivers.
- They can build quickly, as they (tend to) have an arsenal of past designs (both from their team and other teams) from which to choose.
- They (as many others have said) don't reinvent the wheel, unless they have to.

So they quickly select the correct strategy for the game, then quickly get a prototype robot up and running to do some real world testing, then they go to the drawing board and refine what they've initially designed, then they begin fabrication/assembly of the competition robot, then they train the heck (sometimes) out of their drivers, and then they are good to go. Once the competition is underway, they keep their strategy simple, but constantly tweak it to adapt to changing circumstances.

I think the most important thing consistently good teams have are great drivers. With great drivers, your robot could be average to sub-average, and you can still make an effective competitor. BUZZ is a good example of this. There robots were pretty good over the years, but their skilled drivers really made their robots shine.

With all this talk of drivers, and etc.. you'll see that most good teams have cornered some aspect of a given game, and when you watch them, they'll do the same routine every time.