[MrForbes]

Of course we don't design the base to be unnecessarily heavy, but we don't go to extra trouble to make it light...we don't bother with making fancy cutouts, or using aluminum shafts and gears in transmissions, or even using #25 chain. We do design the drive base so it is rugged and as light as it can be while requiring as little work and special stuff as possible, and easy to build quickly, so we can get the robot moving asap.

We do go to extra effort to make the stuff "up top" light, usually by designing a mechanism that has most of the weight down low.

I've never understood putting all that effort into making the drive base as light as possible, when the effort would be more effective if applied to the mechanism. If that means rethinking the mechanism design to make it simpler but still effective, all the better.

In 2007 we had a pretty heavy chassis, with an arm that was capable of hanging 6 rings, and ramp for a single robot. Being only our second year, we didn't do it all quite right, but the robot was pretty much untippable.