I had $166 for drop. After reading your post, I found the $188 dollar solution, and I can’t beleive that worked.
As dnooman said, I got $548 left on catapult.
Oh, and I figured out how to do golf with leftover money. I was using 1 rubber segment for $100, and adding tension for $100. I guess I should have taken a hint from the name
I think one of the sweetest solutions was for the “Over Under” level, where I used a rocket and pouch. The rocket kind of gets stuck in the cloth for awhile, and finally gets free. There’s a detonator on the rocket, so it fails right as it flies above the goal.
Another cool rocket one was the restricted materials where you only get rubber. I built a rubber “floor”, and a triangular pusher plate, with a rocket attached. The plate does a bunch of flips before it finally reaches the goal, and takes about 3 minutes to settle in. Talk about tweaking the parameters!
Oh, and it’s possible to beat Golf, cheap! Just a single metal plate, placed freely as far up as possible. It falls down, hits the ball, and shoots it off to the right!