Hi Bear,
There are a lot of topics & videos regarding notebooks and I recommend checking them out if you haven’t already.
Here is a topic that might be useful to you:
And another
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Firstly, I recommend developing design goals. It may take a while to do this and there are a multitude of ways to develop them effectively, but in essence I believe you should just weigh out the pros and cons of various game strategies and work it out with your teammates. A design brief should help a bit with this. Just remember that the game strategies you choose can drastically change your design goals. For example, a fast drivetrain has low torque, making it ineffective for heavy defense.
Secondly, take the necessary time to research a variety of things–including various mechanisms (like drivetrains) made by other people (make sure to give proper credit) and weigh out the pros and cons of each. Additionally, you can go further in-depth by researching how many motors it requires, any variants of the design, (i.e. you could turn a basic tank drive with omni wheels to include traction wheels in the center for more strength), and much more.
Then, once you have a general understanding of the various drives, you can begin to CAD some of your own out with the research your team made in mind and explain each drive in detail. Feel free the discussion of the drive’s velocity and it’s relation to gear trains, wheel sizes, friction, and of course, whatever else that’s necessary. You don’t need a million drivetrains to choose from, but the more (quality) options you have the better, IMO.
Finally, you can compare them with a decision/design matrix to analyze and compare them against each other. You can get a variety of statistics (i.e. cost, durability, velocity, etc.) to help this. It definitely shouldn’t be solely pros and cons.
Anyway, hope this helps.