What do you guys think the viability of mecanums will be this year. Do you think a tank drive will be better? Or an X drive? What flaws are there to mechanums despite being slower. Do they have as much torque as a tank drive?
One flaw of mechanums is you lose traction thanks to having less surface are on the wheels. the other thing is if you are unhappy with them you can easily swap them out in between competitions without having to rebuild part of your chassis.
The whole strafing vs no strafing drive argument comes up literally EVERY YEAR, THIS TIME OF YEAR. Guess what? Every year they are basically useless. Very few teams ever become successful with any sort of strafing drive, this year 7K comes to my mind. Overall it is just a better idea to not even consider a strafing drive unless you are coming up with something radical.
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I think strafing vs no strafing comes up every year, but this year we need to consider how it can be different with v5. mechanums have historically been bad for what reasons, and how are these overcome somewhat by v5? X-drives used to be bad why? and how many of these issues are mitigated by v5?
Strafing vs no strafing depends on the game as well - in a more open game, such as ITZ, strafing might not make a lot of sense, but in a tighter game such as TP, strafing was more common, largely due to the ability for v5 motors to overcome issues weth mechanum wheels, but also because with the heavy defense it was often difficult for a tank drive to line up properly.
On the list of teams that have used v5 to a successful degree:
7k
5225a
50505
40404
5327C
i’m probably missing a bunch just let me know.
Strafing can be viable, but it depends entirely on how much you’re able to use it. A lot of teams aren’t used to using drives like this, so they underperform or use them as tank+ drives instead of maximizing their potential by adapting a driver style and game strategy suited to this style of gameplay
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I know @ZackJo used mecanums on his tp robot to some degree of success.
my only experience with mecanums in on a drive I one made for fun, and I have to say I don’t think they bring much to the table on a wide open field like this year.
although they could be incredibly useful in auton, you could just strafe to the next row of cubes to intake them rather than having to turn a lot. I think any sort of extra mobility and such really helps during autons, but once driver control begins they don’t get used so much. for example the scrapers in tp, they were very very useful during auton, but teams rarely had opportunities to use them during driver control.
So really it depends on your design, driver, and strategy. You have to think if the costs of using mecanums are worth the benefits.
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Everyone is just gonna end up using omnis