[lcoreyl]

I can say in general in my experience you don't need gyro, encoders, or precision weight distribution to get a good strafe.

posting a quick video showing these things below will greatly increase your chances of getting some help, because we are all making a lot of assumptions in trying to guess your problem.

1) show your best and worst spinning rollers
2) show wheel rotations during strafe (as magnets mentioned). you can also put the bot on blocks to show this.
3) a clear shot to show the path the robot goes in when commanded to strafe


Also, the "O" vs "X" configuration wouldn't affect your ability to strafe, it would just go in the opposite direction. a worm's eye view X configuration would make it hard to rotate the bot.