[sjspry]

Okay, okay, okay. The only thing I have to add to this thread is that Mecanum wheels are not as underpowered as most people make them out to be. While our robot wasn't the best last year, we did make it to nationals with a broken robot playing defense with mecanums. Yes, the wheels have some give, but not if you're applying power to them. You obviously wouldn't beat a purpose-built high-traction bot, but you will be pretty close to evenly matched with everyone else (unless you did something... not right).

Given this, and all other things being equal, I would always choose mecanum wheels due to the maneuverability which is a plus while defending. The only problem this year is that our team is rather short on funding, and our design called for two of the CIMs to be shooting (I still think this is a bad idea).