Necessary Additions to "Starter Kit"?

[Donut]

I'll restate my previous things; the wheel kit is essential, in my opinion, if you want to drive with anything other than the smallest wheels. Tank tread kits are good because although you may not do very many tank tread drive systems, they make excellent conveyor belts, and you'll use a number of those if you build a robot to manipulate balls. The hardware kit is needed if you plan on adding quite a bit to the standard drive base (or any drive base), but if you prefer to buy your own metal and make what you need with your own tools that route is cheaper. Along the same lines as the metal, you will need additional motors or servos if you plan on building much more than a drive base.

Omni-wheels are only needed if you want to specifically use omni-wheels (like in a holomonic robot). Otherwise removing tread from wheels is just as easy, and cheaper (remember, the tread can be removed from both the big and little wheels).

If you'll be doing alot of direct drive or very little gearing, gear kits and chains are unneeded. If you want to be adaptable though you'll need at least one gear kit, and if you want to build robots that pay attention to CG and need to have a moving part high up, you'll probably need the chain kit to transfer power.

Don't bother buying crystals unless you know you will be operating more than one robot at a time.

You can just buy rechargable NIMH batteries and a charger rather than the power pack for a cheaper price and less weight on the robot. From my experience my charger with the battery pack also doesn't seem to work very well.

Do not buy sensors if you will not program your robot. Plain and simple, most of them are worthless without programming.

Even if you get the programming kit, I still say don't buy sensors unless you want to use them or will be building autonomous robots. Every robot I have built so far has had 0 sensors and has been completely functional and easily controllable.

Now that IFI owns Vex, you could save more money by figuring out exactly what you need and only buying specific parts from VexLabs rather than whole kits (if you're dead set on using small wheels only, it will probably be cheaper to go buy some of those from VexLabs rather than buy the whole wheel kit).