Scissort Lift vs. Crane vs. 4-Bar Lift vs. Gas Springs

[AdamC]

Greetings fellow mech-maniacs.
Our team is in somewhat of a pickle this year, since we can't quite agree on what would work best. I've presented the concept of a 4-bar lift (used in some heavy industrial forklifts), which would be capable of lifting the ball to overpass level via worm-gear or lead-screw, and then releasing it to complete the hurdle.
We are also debating the use of a scissors-lift, although I am not very fond of them because of the large amounts of force necessary to lift them from compacted positions, and starting them from semi-open positions means they are taller.
We were thinking about using an angled crane which sloped back over the robot, potentially mounted on a scissors lift to carry it the extra few feet to the overpass, but I think that might be rather complex, and we've had bad experiences with complex machinery.
Finally, we were thinking of a combination of a 4-bar lift and a gas-spring. The lift would center the ball over a motor-wound gas-spring, which would then fire and kick the ball over. I'm skeptical about it, because our '06 tests showed that pneumatics and the like were barely capable of firing a poof-ball, let alone these new trackballs.
Any comments to help settle the predicament would be VERY welcome!