[notaPINKtruck]

I agree with everything said above.

However, I think the best thing you can do to guarantee a good rookie season is to find a veteran team to mentor you. Preferably it should be in your area, but short of that there are hundreds of teams ready and willing to help out rookie students and mentors.

Edit: It just occurred to me that, for their first robot, we always tell rookies to focus on a great drivetrain so they will be valuable to their alliance. That seems to have gone out the window. This year, I think a good "starter" bot for rookies would be something to ferry/herd empty cells from the outpost to the fueling station. It's a capability that any championship alliance must have, and it might be a task that scoring-focused members of an alliance won't have time for/won't be suited for.