Achieving Consistency

[Ginger Power]

The biggest difference between good and great robots is consistency. My question is how do you build a consistent robot? Are some mechanisms always superior to others? Taking last year's game as an example, Texas had a bunch of amazing catapults while California and Canada had a bunch of incredible wheeled shooters.

Does it just come down the number of iterations of a design? The more tweaking, and fine tuning, the more consistency... What is the best way to go about this fine tuning? Is it possible to make an inferior mechanical design superior with enough programming loops?

During your game analysis/initial design brainstorming, how does consistency factor vs. other design elements?

My team has lacked consistency in scoring game elements in every year of its existence. We've managed to do pretty well in spite of that through strategic creativity, but it's definitely time to take the next step as a program. How do you achieve the consistency needed to be the number 1 alliance captain or first pick at an event?