Venting is ok. We all need to vent once in a while.
Just remember your whole team is feeling the stress of having a broken robot now, and the person who did it probably feels bad about it as well.
That said, as jgannon said above, this game will involve a lot of interaction with the walls this year.
While I don't know what exactly caused the damage to your robot, be sure that many other teams broke stuff before they shipped as well during some testing.
What you need to do now in my opinion, is rally your team together with a plan to fix it when you get to competition on Thursday.
You shipped a robot (or all the parts of a robot at least).
Congratulations on that accomplishment!
Here's the good news: You have some time until your competition to form an attack plan as to how to fix your robot.
Now you just need to make that plan, stick with it when you get to the competition, and get yourself back in the game!
Good luck!
We've all been there before btw.
No one team in FIRST has ever shipped a perfect robot that never failed, or never broke throughout the season.
If we found the secret to doing that, it would take a lot of fun (re: stress, excitement, pressure, etc etc..) out of the game, and make for a boring competition. And trust me. The competitions are anything BUT boring.
I think of all the words to describe a FIRST competition, the word boring would be last on the list. (or pretty darn close to last anyways).
One last thought. These robots are not pieces of art. They are working machines. While most of them are sexy pieces of "art" in their own sense, they aren't meant for looking at.
They are meant for playing with and testing to their limits!!
You've tested yourself to your limits by dedicating 6 weeks of your life to the construction of your robot.
Now go out there and test your robot's limits on the field!!
If it breaks.. learn from that, fix it, and get out there and test it again!!
The most fun part of this competition is not building the robot in my opinion.
(My teammates on the Mechanical part of my team would say that statement was enough to be convicted of treason right there!
) lol
Anyways, the most fun part to me is getting to the competition, and testing the limits of the machine you poured your heart and soul and time, and sleepless nights (& days) into.
When you are able to push your robot to the same limits on the field that you pushed yourself through during the build season is definitely when you will have the most fun!