Specialized Robot for partnering? Fuel or Gears

[g_sawchuk]

Most definitely.
There are some high scoring and high reward options in STEAMWORKS that only require the completion of one task (as you said, they aren't linked). Teams may see this and decide to focus on a single aspect of the game.
However, I feel like there are simple enough options for robots who specialize in one thing to still assist in another department. For example, it's likely quite possible to make your gear manipulator very compact. You could use the remaining space for a large container to hold balls that you retrieve with your balls specialist on your alliance from a hopper. This would be helpful to alliance robots that don't use a floor intake and want to ensure that their opposition (that has a floor intake) has less balls available.

Of course, this is only one theoretical situation out of many. Some cross over is beneficial, especially if you can fit a mechanism for said cross over on your robot.