[Wayne TenBrink]

Pay closer attention to the differences between the "Real" field elements and the "Low Cost/Team" Field elements. We built our tower using 4x4 posts for legs and spent the next six weeks figuring out how to reach the horizontal bar at the top. We removed our useless hanging device before our first match. Had we been staring at a tower with the true vertical pole (or at least thought about it), perhaps we would have come up with the superior solution (curl) to the "true" problem, which was getting above the platform, not reaching for a bar.

We learned a general design rule for future reference (regardless of the game): If a task needs to be accomplished only once during the match and doesn't need to be reversed, consider stored energy as the power source.

Good thread, but perhaps it should differentiate between "If we knew then what we know now" answers and "Considering the information that was available at the time, how could we have made better choices, and how can we do better in 2011?"